#like people sent him funeral wreaths. hundreds of them

[insertname099]

AUGH emotional damage...

When can Ai stop lying? *joker laugh*

Wanted to use these very interesting tags as a point of discussion

And YES, she's no longer so alone. Absolute chef's kiss, no matter what, that's true.

But.

In a hypothetical situation where Ai lives, her being a National Idol will be such a large part of her career that it's effectively impossible for her to ever fully divorce herself from that. Like, let's break it down; in the four years that Ai is active post BK's 6 month hiatus during her pregnancy, she goes from basically an underground idol making like 20k Japanese Yen a month to a household name about to perform in a dome, living in a penthouse apartment that has an estimated property value of between 5 to 20 million United Stated Dollars. That absolutely absurd and astronomical tax bracket jump only happens in 4 years, 8 years into her career, and represents a rise in fame so impactful and significant that even a decade after her death she's remembered as THE idol. After her dome concert, her star has only just gotten started rising. Let's say she graduates at 25 from being an idol, that's around the average age range idols start graduating. With Ichigo's leadership (for all his faults, the man is a world-class manager) she could easily become the type of celebrity that simply permeates through the average Japanese person's life, to not even speak of the rising global prominence of JPop around the mid 2010s which BK is poised at just the right time to take full advantage of (the dome concert is around 2012/2013). By the time she's 25, 13 years into her career, she should easily be like the Taylor Swift of Japan, someone that anyone even vaguely familiar of the country's JPop scene is aware of. That type of legacy is something so legendary and blinding that even 10 years post graduation she might still be known mainly for being that idol. Her being known as an established non-idol celebrity would be as monumental a task as her being known as THE idol, imo, something that would take years upon years of careful career management to do.

The way I see it, if Ai wants to publicly be known as the mother of her twins, she has to either be completely retired or dead. There simply is no way for her to not significantly affect her career with the twin's reveal, not to mention how it would affect Strawberry Productions. The greater the star, the greater the controversy. We're talking about the full media circus here, people pulling up her entire childhood and career to analyse and scrutinise any little detail, and you bet that they'd discover that 6 month hiatus that just so happens to coincide with when the twins were born. The only way I see this being possible for her to withstand publicly is for her to be so divorced from the industry that it can no longer affect her life, a very tall order that basically requires her to retire after her dome concert. The level of fame is simply too self-sustaining otherwise. And no way people-pleasing Ai is gonna be able to do that, especially after a monumental career capstone achievement like the dome concert.

So to conclude, when can Ai stop lying? When she has no other choice. Her children's existence is too fundamentally damaging for her career to ever publicly reveal it under any circumstance. It is one or the other. The nature of the beast is that her fame is so impactful that the twin's entire childhoods have to be built around it... by the time she's in a position to publicly be a part of their childhoods it would already mostly be over. I personally think the best way for this all to play out is for her to completely step away from the public eye once she graduates, she should have easily enough savings for her to raise her kids well into adulthood by then. Just chuck her millions saved into an investment account and she should be well off enough to not need to work for the rest of her life; wealth does become self-sustaining past a critical mass. Doesn't matter if she's photographed being at the twin's graduation if she's no longer a celebrity at all. Can't ruin her career if there's no career to ruin!

Hello professor and CEO of Ai Hoshino! I don’t know if you’ve gotten an ask like this before (I think you did but I honestly can’t find it now) but I’m curious, in an AU where Ai survives and manages to graduate/retire what do you think her life would be like after? Being an idol is a huge part of her character so it’s hard to imagine her without that. In an RP with some pals of mine I was thinking of submitting an AU version of Ai where she officially graduates from being an idol and decides to move to a small city (which is the setting of the RP, I wanted to come up with a reasoning for why she’s there) which is mostly why I’m asking, I don’t wanna mess up her character

YES… LET HER RETIRE AND JUST HANG OUT… 😭 PLEEEEASE GET HER OUT OF THESE SITUATIONS….

It admittedly is really hard to conceptualize who 'Ai' is without idolhood, because so much of her personhood has been tangled up in and warped by the entertainment industry but tbh, I think you could make that struggle to find herself post-idolhood an IC thing and have Ai try to carve out 'Ai Hoshino's' identity when she isn't defined by 'Ai of B-Komachi'. And I think above all else, the thing that really matters to her the most is being Aqua and Ruby's mother - it's the thing she finds the most comfort, joy and genuine emotional fulfillment in. So if she was ever going to leave idolhood and Tokyo behind, it'd be for them.

I don't think she could ever really fully leave the entertainment industry, tho - I mentioned this in an earlier ask I don't have handy, but she really is kind of trapped there. She sacrificed her education and formative years to it and the result is someone who doesn't really have the skills to navigate mundane, day-to-day life. Kyun mentions in Viewpoint B how shittily ex-idols get treated when they try and make their way into the working world and that's for girls who AREN'T autism creature gijinkas without full literacy or a high school diploma.

So I've always thought she'd graduate to being a multi-talent, a TV personality who does a bit of everything but is still kind of defined by her 'Ai of B-Komachi' image even after she's tried to shed it. She'd do a lot of TV shows and variety stuff, but singing and dancing would always be her main focus. She'd keep doing that to put away a good amount of money for Aqua and Ruby's education and probably start stepping back a bit more into private life once those two graduated university and she didn't need to worry about providing for them as much.

[kkurokitty]

i guess it’s time to dust off the old soap box. because i’m disappointed and disgusted by some of you.

to preface this, i am boycotting. i unfollowed all of their accounts, i blocked them on spotify, etc. this isn’t to punish the other six members, but to send a message to SM that their actions have consequences and that they’re unfortunately going to end up ruining RIIZE’s reputation for the shady way they are moving. they don’t deserve this. shotaro, eunseok, sungchan, wonbin, sohee, anton and seunghan all deserve better. that is the purpose of this boycott. i watched the streams on talk saxy skyrocket when he was announced to come back, i watched their twitter followers shoot up to 810k and i also watched them fall down to 732k (and still dropping) when the departure announcement was released.

i am ot7. but the way some of you are acting is despicable. it’s laughable how you guys are preaching about the harassment seunghan has received that has even spilled over to wonbin, sungchan, eunseok, sohee, etc. but then you turn around and harass people who have their own reasons to not participate in the boycott.

i agree, it would be nice if everyone could unite on this. but the reality is that people have their own attachments to the group and may not feel right ceasing all interaction with the group’s content. there are way more people participating in the boycott than you know. only about 100 people were amongst those who sent wreaths to SM and there are hundreds of thousands of people boycotting and rallying in seunghan’s honor.

which brings me to my next point. you guys are no better than the ones who sent funeral wreaths to seunghan, wrote his name in red ink, and told him to go to the han river and k*ll himself and that they’ll bully him until he does. sending death threats to people on tumblr because they aren’t doing what you want them to is the same thing. you’re cut from the same cloth. you want to preach about safety and mental health when it comes to him - which you should, he deserves to be safe and healthy - but then you turn around and send the same threats to someone who isn’t participating in the boycott. why is it okay when the person isn’t a celebrity? you people say that SM supports bullies, and they do, but you’re bullies too.

boycotting works. it does. i think more people should do it. but i also think it’s very hypocritical to bully and harass someone and send them death threats because they aren’t doing exactly as you are. behavior like that only drives someone further away from where you want them and you should be focusing your energy on those who are stalking and harassing the riize members and doxxing their families, not someone who just wants to write smut on tumblr.com.

i think some of you are boycotting for the wrong reasons. your goal and focus should be on the seven guys, not harassing people and waiting for the moment they turn anonymous asks back on so you can send them threats because they’re not completely cutting off the group. that’s embarrassing. that’s only giving more fuel to ot6s in the end. this is supposed to be a time where the fandom is united over his unfair departure from the group, but all you guys are doing is fighting and constantly adding fuel to the fire.

do fucking better.

[luneengene2]

Even though I'm not Briize, I really sympathize with what Seunghan and Briize are going through:(

I really want to hug Briize who stood up for OT7. You guys are a bunch of strong people who have to face the harshness of unfair treatment from companies and BASTARD fans:')...

Seunghan, he was hated, cursed, insulted, and told to commit suicide by a group of people on social media who should have SUPPORTED him. Just because he dated during his pre-debut days, those damn people treated him like a criminal. Worse still, THOUSANDS OF FUNERAL WREATHS were sent to the front of the building where he worked. He is not dead, he is alive and well༎ຶ⁠‿⁠༎ຶ

My question is, is dating and smoking a crime?! No, sometimes teenagers can do that. Bruh, idols are human too, they have the right to seek happiness. They are NOT YOURS. Don't act like the idol is yours, you are JUST A FAN. Please KNOW YOUR LIMITS.

Seunghan has only dated and smoked, he has never even been violent towards a girl. I see it as very normal and common for a teenager, but why did that group of people attack him as if he was a drug dealer.

If I said 'Your fave often has sex with his girlfriend' to a bunch of idiots, I don't know what would happen to me💀. Bruh, I'm even sure my ult has had sex many times, it's up to them anyway, their PRIVACY.

For example, my bias is Jo from &Team. I sometimes think, he is shy but dangerous and probably no stranger to 'bed games'. I don't mind if he often kisses, smokes, drinks, goes to clubs, or even has sex. Because why? He's a normal human being. As a fan, I have no right to control his life. I just need to SUPPORT him.

To Briize who stood up for OT7, I'm sure you'll be strong in the face of this stupidity. Please don't abandon Seunghan and continue to support him. Keep telling him that he is a great and worthy human being, he deserves to be loved. I can't do anything, I can only send virtual hugs.

And as for Seunghan, I hope that boy stays strong. Oh my gosh, I can't imagine how devastated he must be. He was considered so low that idiots sent him hundreds of death wreaths just for coming back from hiatus, dating and smoking. I also thought, if for example he was still dating the same girl now, I also thought about the girl's feelings.

Hope everything gets better for Seunghan and Briize. I'm sure you'll get through the storm, please stay strong.

[bebecue]

What makes it worse is that they will listen to insane demands some fans make, but refuse to listen to people when they are sharing genuine concerns. I don't know much about riize but the fact that some fans were so upset about a minor kissing someone and smoking a cigarette that they sent a ton of funeral wreaths to threaten the guy who's I think is like 20 now?? because they didn't want him in the group, is very gross! and SM listened to them! literally telling these delusional fans that if they do vile shit they will get what they want instead of protecting their artists. like I've seen some idols who did horrible things get less of a reaction than this guy. It's such a weird thing?

I really don't understand. how can they allow stuff like this, but when people are saying, "Hey! maybe don't support companies who support genocide. " Suddenly, they don't seem to be able to hear it.

and the dj khalid collab was very out of nowhere, I've never met a fan of svt who is also a fan of him? probably because most of svts fans are women and don't really like men who are openly misogynistic, so it's just a really weird collab to do. if they're trying to appeal more to the western crowd, there's just?? so many other artists they could have gone with that would have appealed to far more people.

i dont keep up with newer groups as much but honestly the whole seunghan scandal makes me so mad on the fans' behalf like they basically sent him death threats and bullied him out of the group and sm essentially condoned it. i was so glad to hear that kpop stores joined in on the boycott, but fingers crossed their international fans follow through and actually boycott the group because these delulus cannot keep getting away with it.

like i get that the guys may be fans of him and they have artistic liberty to make the music that they want to, but with the guy who was all "i will never go down on my wife but she has to go down on me" like bro.... hundreds of talented artists out there you can collab with without alienating your fanbase.... yikes

[thegreenmeridian]

Ok, a lot of people have heard of the Dyatlov Pass Incident. But have you ever heard of “The English Calamity”?

In 1936 a group of 27 grammar schools boys aged 12-17 went hiking in the Black Forest in Germany, under the direction of 27 year old PE and German teacher Kenneth Keast. The oldest boy, 17 year old Douglas Mortifee was a prefect and assisted Keast in leading the group.

By most reports, they were poorly equipped for the challenging route chosen, especially given the wintery conditions in April. Some were even wearing sandals and shorts. The only map they had was a 1:100,000 scale map lacking terrain details, provided by the “School Travel Service”.

The plan was to cross Mount Schauinsland, starting at the village of Freiburg and finishing in Todtnauberg. When warned by the tourist office in Freibergof the weather forecast, Keast’s response was a blythe “the English are used to sudden changes in the weather!”.

After getting lost in the deteriorating conditions, they happened across an inn where again, a local woman warned them against continuing. The paths and signeage would be buried beneath snow and given that they’d already become disoriented once, surely continuing would be dangerous.

Again, Keast didn’t seem to grasp the seriousness. They would brush the snow off signs if need be, he said. And so they continued. Two woodcutters retreating from the worsening weather warned them off continuing, and a postman, Otto Steirt, even offered to guide them to return to the village or guide them to a mining hostel. This was at 3.15pm; they had left Freiburg in the morning. Keast turned the offer down.

Keast did question the state of his boys, most reporting at least some degree of misery from the cold and wet, but nonetheless, Keast decided it would be better to press on. Partly as a result of his map: at such a scale, the map showed only major routes and gave no indication that the next leg of the hike would be over particularly steep inclines, including he gruelling 600m 70% gradient stretch known as Kappler Wand.

The first boy to collapse from cold and exhaustion was Jack Alexander Eaton. The school’s boxing champion, healthy and fit, fell to the ground and was offered three things: a piece of cake, an orange, and the advice to “buck up.”

At last, they reached the ridge. Now they were facing the threat of full exposure to the winds, and it was here Keast made a terrible mistake. Had they turned eastward into the howling winds, they would have reached the summit station that lay less than a mile away. Instead, and understandably, they turned west. Disoriented, bedraggled, the boys continued on. Eaton and another boy were by now unable to walk and had to be carried, another three weren’t far off.

At last, they heard the 7pm church bells from the distant village of Hofsgrund. Knowing they would not make it off the mountain without help, Keast sent two of the healthiest ahead while the others remained behind to try and revive their fallen friends. The two sent ahead took more than an hour to reach a farmhouse on the very edge of the village. Farmer Eugen Schweizer, was in the process of bundling himself up to leave his house to catch the bread delivery when up to his door stumbled two half-frozen boys in shorts. Through chattering teeth and in broken German, they managed to give their message.

Zwei Mann, krank am Berg. Two men sick on the mountain.

Herr Schweizer ran at once to the village in to gather a rescue party. With skis strapped to their feet, the men set out and what they found was a disaster. The boys were spread out across a wide area by this point, some stumbling towards the village and some collapsed. Schweizer nearly fell over two unconscious boys nearly buried in the snow. One boy, Stanley Lyons, was discovered collapsed only 10 metres from the village inn, already dead. Keast was found with two unconscious boys. Rescuer Hubert Wissler climbed alone for 45 minutes to reach three boys suffering exposure. The rescue effort carried on until every boy had been found, lasting until almost midnight.

A doctor who was by chance holidaying in the area rushed to help the worst cases, while the boys in less severe condition were treated by the locals using the time-tested method of beating them with brooms to get their circulation going, lest exposure to the heat of the large wood stove in the inn send them into shock.

Despite the villager’s best efforts, four boys were dead. Eaton, who had fallen first, 12 year old Francis Bourdillon, 13 year old Peter Ellercamp, and 14 year old Stanley Lyons. Two more, 14 year olds Arthur Roberts and Roy Witham, remained in serious condition and were sent to hospital the following day. Witham was never to regain consciousness.

(Jack Eaton)

Dazed and barely able to comprehend what had happened, the boys were returned to Freiburg to await their journey home.

Where the story gets especially tragic is how it was used as Nazi propeganda. The leader of the Hitler Youth rushed to telegraph the British Ambassador to inform him that wreaths “from the German Youth” would be placed upon every coffin sent back to England, and that a Hitler Youth sentinel would watch over the coffins until their transportation. Newspapers in both nations carried pictures of this vigil, with coffins draped in Union Jacks against a backdrop of swastikas. As the local Youth leader gave a speech about the “will of understanding and peace” between British and German “comrades”, older Youth members took the surviving boys out to play football and on omnibus rides.

The hike has begun on a Friday; on Monday, the nation celebrated Hitler’s birthday. The coffins of the boys were not except from the celebrations. In a parade lead by local Nazi dignitaries, hundreds of Hitler Youth, Union of German Girls, and Freiburg schoolchildren, the coffins were escorted to Freiburg train station. The survivors boarded the train accompanied by 20 Youth.

The Nazi propeganda machine had already begun spreading the tale that the rescue had been a Hitler Youth effort, and the Reich’s Youth Press had issued a statement claiming the boys who had died had done so in the service of “further[ing] the open, honest friendship between nations”. The mayor of Freiburg even wrote to the father of one of the deceased boys, speaking of how his son had been “sacrificed” and become a “standard bearer for the important aspects of understanding between our two great nations”.

The excitement did not stop at Freiburg; thousands of Germans came out to watch the train on its 330 mile journey from Freiburg to the Belgian border, many throwing sweets for the survivors as they hung out of the train windows to watch the spectacle. Several parents of the boys personally wrote thank you letters to Hitler to thank him for the grand send off, and to the German state train company for waiving the £60 fee for conveying each coffin.

When the coffins at last returned home, they bore wreaths from the Hitler Youth, the British Ambassador to Germany, and Hitler himself. More floral tributes, bedecked in swastikas, arrived for the boys’ funerals.

Keast remained in Germany for another few days as a guest of the Hitler Youth, and a British tabloid newspaper ran a photo of him sitting in an open-top car with a Hitler Youth representive and a local Gestapo member.

Plans for a memorial were raised publicly for the first time by the official Nazi newspaper around a month after the disaster. The Hofsgrund villagers, perhaps annoyed at the Hitler Youth claiming the rescue efforts as their own, lobbied for an inscription that would have acknowledged the locals who had risked their lives to bring each boy, dead or alive, from the mountain. It was, however, the leader of the loca Hitler Youth who was eventually given control of the project.

While the original plan by the Hofsgrund villagers had been a rock with an inscription, the Youth leader wanted something far grander, going so far as to bring aboard renouned art professor Hermann Alker to create a design for a project he was keen to stress was of special interest to the Führer. The final design consisted of two huge slabs of Black Forest granite inscribed with the names of the boys, with a third stone bridged atop bearing a Nazi eagle and swastika.

(The monument today)

The inauguration was due to be attended by a member of the British royal family and Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Scout movement. However, the monument’s completion date, the summer of 1938, was shortly before the Munich Agreement which gave Germany control of the Sudetenland, and the atmosphere between Germany and England was no longer one in which such an event would take place. There were even calls to tear the monument down, though nothing ever came of them.

Another, smaller monument exists. Commissioned by the father of Jack Eaton and created by a Freiburg sculpture, the lone granite cross sits just 500m from the grand Nazi sculpture. Another memorial sits at the entrance to the Hofsgrund church yard, erected by the parents and thanking the locals for their help.

(Eaton’s memorial)

Eaton’s father, also named Jack, lead his own investigation into the events, going so far as to travel the route himself just days after the disaster and interview rescuers and witnesses with the help of a solicitor and interpreter. He discovered the inadequate map used by Keast and handed it over to the local prosecutor’s office, vowing not to rest until a public inquiry was held to determine how such a tragedy could have happened. Eventually releasing his own 10-page report on the events, Eaton Sr. believed that had it not been for the church bells, every boy likely would have perished. He also claimed that Keast’s “open dislike” of Germans resulted in his refusal to take any warning seriously, concluding that it would have been “degrading for him to accept a German’s word of advice”. His understandable anger towards Keast was such that he originally intended his memorial to his son to contain the words “their teacher failed them in the hour of trial”, though the local authorities refused to allow it.

No investigation of the matter was ever seriously considered and Keast returned to work at the Strand school, along with his surviving pupils, not long after. He even went so far as to plan a ski trip to Austria just eight months after the tragedy, though this was stopped after threats to the school made by Eaton Sr.

This was not a singular incident; Eaton Sr. frequently harassed Keast at the school and at his home, and often railed against older boys on the trip whom he accused of cowardice in letting harm befall the younger students. Eaton Sr.’s anger was such that he hung a sign in his shop charging Keast with his son’s death, and shouted at a student in the street for wearing the uniform of the school that had caused his son’s death. The trauma of losing his son caused him to become the tragedy’s fifth victim, dying in a psychiatric hospital after several years spent desperately fighting for justice.

Keast continued his career as a teacher, eventually moving to a different school and living in comfortable obscurity until his passing in 1971. His actions immediately following the tragedy were seemingly those of a man unable to comprehend or accept what had happened - the report given to a German investigator completely omitted the severity of warnings offered by the locals and on his return home, he went quickly on holiday to Bournemouth where he had a brief but intense romance with a teacher met there. A letter sent to her, barely a week after four of his students died, thanks her for restoring him to “whatever sanity I can hope to approach” and also makes the claim that “in spite of everything,” his time with her was “the happiest day of his life”.

The English Calamity is practically unheard of outside of Hofsgrund and Freiburg, and the official, albeit false, story of Nazi heroism made it an uncomfortable one to remember. But it is worth remembering, not least as an example of the dangers of arrogance in the face of danger.

[diddlesanddoodles]

DEAD WALLS RISE - CONNAR

PART THREE

His father was grim faced and his mother clutched her children’s hands hard enough to hurt but neither Connar or Penny pulled away. Gen stood near the small hearth, watching the flames dance.

“What...what does that mean for us, then?” Arthur asked. “Now that he’s dead.”

“The war’s over,” the captain explained, cleaning the inside of his pipe’s bowl with his pinky finger. “But don’t get too excited just yet. King Warren’s mandate will take time to reach the ends of Vhasshal and still there’s no guarantee all folks will honor it. Smuggling and selling humans has become quite profitable for some. Best keep on as you have for a while.”

Gen pushed back from the hearth and turned to regard the blue coated giant. “Should I keep sending in the reports?”

“Yes. They may be more valuable now than ever. Now that the trade’s illegal, information’s going to start drying up. People will be less likely to tell you all that they have. So whatever you have, keep sending it to me.”

“But still,” Penny said, surprising most of them as she never spoke whenever Keral visited. The large man outright terrified her and she always made it a point to make herself scarce around him. “The Blood King is dead. Things will get better right? They have to...”

Keral took a moment to regard the girl. “Doesn’t always work out that way, lass. Nethrin’s dead. His last son’s King now. He’s gonna have to work hard and smart and very quickly to secure his power. The time between transitions of power is precarious and if not done right, will make more of a mess than what we had to begin with. For now, all we can do it wait and see.”

…………………………………..

Connar and his family stayed with Gen in his home for another five years. In that time, Gen continued to supply the blue coats with as much information as he was able to garner, but as Keral predicted, most of it dried it very quickly.  Connar’s skill with leather continued to grow and he branched off into metal works. For almost a year, he worked on nothing but knives. Pocket knives, axe blades, kitchen knives, etc. Gen was beyond pleased with his progress and continued to challenge the boy as his teenage years began to slip into young adulthood.

Gen’s gray hair began to turn white and his strength was not what it had been until one day he gathered them all to tell them something.

“I have been playing with the idea of perhaps moving in with my sister,” he said. “She’s already assured me you all would be welcome.”

“Doesn’t she live in the village outside the castle, though?” Maria asked. “Would it be safe?”

“With the King so near, I’d imagine the village might very well be the safest place of all,” Gen replied. “And there is also the option of the Hill Tribe if you wish to live with your own people.”

Maria suddenly sent her daughter an amused side eyed glance. “We might be able to find you a nice beau, Penny. And you can start giving me some grandchildren.”

Penny flushed red and pointed to Connar as he took a large bite of an apple. “What about Connar?”

Arthur laughed. “Oh, he’s hopeless. He’d scare any girl off.”

Connar made a muffled whine of offense at the accusation as they all had a good laugh.

In the end, they did make the move the Gen’s sister’s home. Beth was a pleasant woman, fifteen years Gen’s junior, and like her brother, was a widow with all four of her children grown and having moved away. She and Maria became fast friends and both immediately began a crusade to find Penny a nice young man, despite her protestations. Connar was simply happy that they had not began to do the same to him and he was free to continue on learning whatever Gen still had left to teach him.

A little over a year later, Penny was married and moved to the Hill tribe with her new husband and soon after, they welcomed their first child into the world and both Connar’s parents moved in to help with the baby. Connar stayed behind in Beth’s house with Gen, still eager to learn and hone his skills.  

Gen passed away in his sleep two months later.

Looking back, Connar would remember very little of that time. In many ways it felt as though he had lost a father. He and his family owed so much to Gen and with him gone, Connar felt adrift and without a moor like a boat being carried away by the current. Too tired to try and steer himself back on coarse and too numb to understand why he should even try.

His family had a new baby to help distract from the pain and as much as he tried to throw himself into his work, he just could not bare to even look at his tools. The same ones Gen had made for Connar himself. With his hands.

Gen’s funeral was attended by more people than Connar would have thought and he stayed very close to Beth and her eldest son during the whole affair. Trying very hard not to see the way some of the attending giants sneered at him. Unlike Silvaaran funerals, Vhasshals buried their dead rather than burn them on pyres. They were placed in family tombs built far into the ground and the flesh of the dead would be returned to the earth and once there was nothing but bones left, they were pushed back into the far chamber with the bones of their ancestors to make room for the next body. So a single family tomb could hold hundreds of individuals.

Connar’s family were forced to leave early as the baby began to make a fuss and Penny was worried he might catch a cold in the chilly air. Connar thought it was more to do with being nervous around so many giants and he did not blame them. But he petitioned to stay.

He couldn’t leave.

Connar stared at the large opening to the Taversh family tomb as six Vhasshalans carried Gen’s shrouded body down, feeling numb. Flowers and wreaths and ribbons were places all around the opening as well as food and gifts that would be collected after by the family. When the giant emerged from the tomb without Gen, Connar felt the tears fall heavily down his face.

We can’t just leave him down there...

“I’m so sorry, Beth,” said one of the giants, voice thick with emotion. He was very tall for a giant and his arms were thicker than tree trunks. He lowered himself to hug the much smaller woman.

“Oh, Hevian. You’re so much taller then I remember,” Beth said, smiling through tears. She patted his shoulders. “And thicker! By the Gods, you’ve grown.”

The giant smiled, but it looked hollow as grief was painted thickly upon his features. He turned to Gen’s son and shook his hand, muttering a small greeting and condolence. But his eyes dipped lower to spy Connar. Beth caught the giant’s questioning look.

“Hevian, this is Connar,” she said. “Gendril took him and his folks in during the war. The human lass with the wee babe that left earlier? That was them.”

Hevian crouched down and extended a hand towards Connar and stuck his finger out. “It’s nice to meet ye, Connar.”

He looked up at the giant and reached out to grip the tip of the large finger.

“You too,” he mumbled.

“You know,” Beth said. “Gen was teaching Connar here. You should see some of his leather work, Hevian. It’s beautiful. A wee small, but beautiful.”

Hevian’s face lightened with intrigue and he spared the human a smile. “Well, I might need to come visit ye some day and take a gander myself.”

Beth looked down at Connar. “Hevian here was Gendril’s apprentice. Took over the royal smithy when Gen retired.”

And then Connar’s brain kicked him as he suddenly connected the dots and he blurted, “Oh! So you’re Hev.”

The giant grinned. “Aye, that’s me.”

“Gen told me a lot about you,” Connar replied.

“Good things I hope.”

“Mostly he said your leather work was crap,” Connar replied and then cursed at himself. But much to his relief, Hevian just threw his head back and laughed.

“Aye, that sounds ‘bout right to me. Never was much good with all that stuff. Was always more interested in playing with fire and sharp metal.”

…………………….

The funeral came and went and Connar returned to Beth’s house. That night at dinner, she pulled him aside.

“You’re always welcome here, dear,” she told him. “But I can’t help but wonder if you might feel better with your folks.”

“I thought about it,” he replied. “And it makes the most sense. I don’t want to impose on you. I know it’s a pain having me here. Your neighbors would be happy, I guess.”

“Oh, who gives a right hooey what they think,” she spat. “Gen loved you, Connar. And until the day they lay be beside him, you will have a place here. Same as your folks and sister.”

“I don’t know what I’ll do,” he said finally.

“Well, however long you need to decide take it.”

“Thank you, Beth.”

………………………………………..

His father had gotten him a job as a field hand working one of the wheat fields in the Hill Tribe. In all honesty, Connar did not even know anyone in the Hill Tribe farmed at all. But it sounded like a good way to start off on his own and long hard labor might just be what his idle brain needed to snap out of his rut.

He refused Beth’s offer to escort him there, promising her he would be fine. “Besides, if anyone give me trouble, I’ve got this,” he said, pulling out a large hunting knife. Beth was very reluctant to let him go on his own, but finally convinced her by promising he would go through the woods instead of using the roads.

“Please be careful,” she begged.

“I will,” he laughed, waving back at her as he began to walk. “I’ll see you soon.”

The Vhasshal castle was an imposing looking structure set at the top of a large gentle sloping hill with the village just below. The Hill tribe was a few miles away on the other side of the castle where the hills were more pronounced. In order for Connar to get there, he traveled through the forest that made a half moon shape around the castle and since it was strictly part of the castle grounds, it was considered trespassing for anyone to use it without permission from the Crown. Which made it the perfect path for Connar to get to his destination without being spotted by anyone with ill intentions.

He was almost through the thicket part of the forest when his foot caught on something and he fell forward just as metal teeth sprung up from the earth and clamped down onto his left leg. He fell to the ground and drew in a shocked and rattling breath as the worst pain he had ever felt radiated from his leg. He gave a breathless cry and he rolled over to see what had snagged him and he felt his heart drop at the sight. A spring loaded metal snap trap was clamped onto his leg, the sharp metal teeth digging and cutting into his flesh and passed the exposed meat of leg and the seeping blood, he could see the pale white bone.

His head spun as he gave his first real scream of pain. There was so much blood. Already he felt his backside was damp with it. He reached for his hunting knife and tried to pry the teeth apart, but his strength was quickly waning.

“F-fuck!” he screamed. “Augh!”

He quickly pulled his tunic off and used his knife to cut long ribbons out of it, wrapping them around his leg just under his knee and prayed desperately that it would stop the bleeding. Oh Gods, it hurt so much…

He pulled the ends of his makeshift tourniquet with a muffled cry of pain and fell back onto the ground. With every wave of pain, he screamed; fingernails digging into the ground and racking up the earth. All sound around him became muted as every piece of his waking mind was dedicated to feeling the pain from his leg.

He felt more than heard someone approach and the ground shook as a very large someone dropped to the knees beside him. He barely registered that they were speaking to him and through the tears clouding his eyes, he could not make out a face. The end of a stick was pressed against his lips and the voice above began to speak with a little more clarity.  

“...gonna hurt like hell. Bit down on this,” the giant commanded. “Better a stick than your tongue.”

A soon as his teeth were around the stick, there was an abrupt and wholly unwelcomed pressure on his leg as the metal teeth were pulled from his flesh and he heard the shriek of springs. His whole body was shaking from the pain and he sobbed, hands reaching out blindly until they found the warm flesh of a giant hand.

“You’re gonna be fine, Connar,” said the giant. “Keep biting down, lad. Keep breathing. I’m gonna pick ye up, now. Ready? One...two...”

He didn’t wait for the count of three before picking the injured boy up and Connar screamed through his teeth. The trees above him rushed by at an incredible speed before disappearing and were the replaced by stone walls and ceilings. Unfamiliar smells and sounds passed by and he got his first real proper look at the giant.

“...Hev?” he asked just as the darkness around his vision became absolute and he passed out.

………………………….

When he woke up, his head felt thick with fog and his limbs were heavy and sore.

But he couldn’t feel his leg. Weak as he was, he lifted his head up as high as he could and looked down at himself. He lay in a human sized bed in a room that was anything but human sized. There was a collection of bottles and rolls of bandages on a small table next to his bed, but the one thing that struck him was the tell tale lack of shape next to his right leg. Just below his left knee, there was nothing. A wave of emotion roiled up from inside him and he fell back against his pillow, tears already falling.

The second time he awoke, Keral was there and was speaking to a human who he initially thought was a man, but their voice revealed themselves as a woman.

“...he’s on some pretty heavy sedatives and pain tonics,” said the woman. “But he made it through the fever just fine. He’ll be bed ridden for a while yet while he heals.”

“Beth’s all outta sorts,” Keral said. “Blamin’ herself fer lettin’ him go on his own. His folks are wonderin’ when they came come see ‘im.”

“They’re welcome to come and see him, but don’t give them the impression he’ll be awake at all. I’m trying to keep him sedated as much as I can so I don’t need to bottle feed him pain tonic. I’m not trying to make him into an addict and with the dosage he would need at this stage, he surely would be.”

Time became inconsequential as he slipped in and out of consciousness. He vaguely remembered his mother and father visiting and Beth as well, but he was unable to speak or if he did, he could not recall what he said.

And for three weeks, that was Connar’s existence.

………………………….

Sawyer handed him a small book. “Barnaby said you might enjoy this one. Funny poems and such.”

“Thank you,” he said, idly flipping through the pages.

“So,” she said, “Give any thought to what you might do?”

“I guess go back to Beth’s place for a while. Teach myself to walk again with a crutch and be the local cripple. Beg for coins at the street corner.”

“Well, what were you doing before?”

“...honestly? Mooching off Beth. Gen before her. I was going to go be a field hand, but...well.”

“I though Hev said you were a craftsman.”

Connar blinked. “He said that?”

“Yeah. That you worked with leather and such.”

“Well, yeah. I do. Gen taught me. I wasn’t his apprentice or nothing. He just showed me some stuff.”

Sawyer gave him a look. “So, why aren’t you working with the skills you already have? You’re a skilled craftsman. Go craft. You don’t need both legs to do that, do you?”

“No, but what could I make that a giant would want to buy?”

Sawyer rolled her eyes. “Just because you lost your leg doesn’t mean your life and dignity went with it.”

………………..

He had just finished the book of poems when Hev came to visit him. Even among giants, Hev was tall and broad shouldered. His black hair was pulled back into a braid and though his tunic was clean, he still smelled like the forge; ash and metal and smoke. It reminded him a lot of Gen.

When Hev entered the infirmary, he gave Connar a wide white tooth grin and grabbed a chair. “How’re ye feeling, lad?”

“Better now that I can think straight,” he replied, setting the book aside. “But I think I’m done spending all my time in bed.”

Sitting into the chair, Hev gave Connar a nod. “Aye, suppose there’s only so much peace and quiet ye can take. Manage to get around on them at all?” He pointed to crutches leaning against his bed posts.

“A bit,” Connar shrugged. “Not that hard. Just tires me out. Not use to walking with my arms.”

Hev chortled at that. “Well, reason why I wanted to come see ye was I had an interestin’ talk with Sawyer. About yer future.”

Connar furrowed his brow. “Yeah, she was talking to me about that. Thinks I should try and use the skills Gen taught me. Since I’m useless like this for any job in the fields.”

“Aye,” Hev said. “And I agree with her. Last time Beth visited ye, she came by the shop and gave me this.”

From his pocket, he pulled out a knife sheath. He had made it for Gen for a new knife he’d made. It was not long after they had first moved into Beth’s home and Connar had decorated the flat sides of the sheath with depictions of the village with the Vhasshalan castle up on the hill.

“Ye made this?” Hev asked, his tone oddly serious.

Connar nodded and stared at the sheath in Hev’s hands. “Yeah. For Gen.”

“Ye want a job?”

Connar blinked at him. “Wait...what?”

Hev grinned and held up the sheath. “This is amazing work, Connar. I showed it to Master Donal and he showed it to the King.”

Connar blanched. “You...he did... wait, what?”

But Hev just grinned wider. “Aye. He was might impressed too. Told me I should offer ye a job in the smithy. And I agree. Ye’d be a great help.”

Connar did his best impression of a fish as he gaped open mouthed at him. “You...you’re offering me a job?”

“I am.”

“Oh...well,” Connar shrugged as a wide and elated smile crossed his face. “Fuck yeah I will!”

“Don’t ye wanna know the wages?” Hev laughed.  

“Doesn’t matter,” Connar replied excitedly. “You could pay me in fucking paper coins and I’d still do it.”

“Oi, careful now, lad. If Donal ever hears ye say that he might take ye up on that offer.”

[onceklaudiaspiechowicz]

Greek Gods Associated with The Underworld

Hades

“Hades (Aides, Aidoneus, or Haidês), the eldest son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea; brother of Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Demeter, and Hestia, is the Greek god of the underworld. When the three brothers divided the world between themselves, Zeus received the heavens, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the underworld; the earth itself was divided between the three. Therefore, while Hades' responsibility was in the underworld, he was allowed to have power on earth as well. However, Hades himself is rarely seen outside his domain, and to those on earth his intentions and personality are a mystery. In art and literature Hades is depicted as stern and dignified, but not as a fierce torturer or devil-like. However, Hades was considered the enemy to all life and was hated by both the gods and men; sacrifices and prayers did not appease him so mortals rarely tried. He was also not a tormenter of the dead, and sometimes considered the "Zeus of the dead" because he was hospitable to them. Due to his role as lord of the underworld and ruler of the dead, he was also known as Zeus Khthonios ("the infernal Zeus" or "Zeus of the lower world"). Those who received punishment in Tartarus were assigned by the other gods seeking vengeance. In Greek society, many viewed Hades as the least liked god and many gods even had an aversion towards him, and when people would sacrifice to Hades, it would be if they wanted revenge on an enemy or something terrible to happen to them.”

Persephone

“Persephone (also known as Kore) was the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, and Zeus. Persephone was abducted by Hades, who desired a wife. When Persephone was gathering flowers, she was entranced by a narcissus flower planted by Gaia (to lure her to the underworld as a favor to Hades), and when she picked it the earth suddenly opened up. Hades, appearing in a golden chariot, seduced and carried Persephone into the underworld. When Demeter found out that Zeus had given Hades permission to abduct Persephone and take her as a wife, Demeter became enraged at Zeus and stopped growing harvests for the earth. To soothe her, Zeus sent Hermes to the underworld to return Persephone to her mother. However, she had eaten six pomegranate seeds in the underworld and was thus eternally tied to the underworld, since the pomegranate seed was sacred there.”

Hecate

“Hecate is a goddess in ancient Greek religion and mythology, most often shown holding a pair of torches or a key and in later periods depicted in triple form. She is variously associated with crossroads, entrance-ways, night, light, magic, witchcraft, knowledge of herbs and poisonous plants, ghosts, necromancy, and sorcery. Her earliest appearance in literature was in Hesiod's Theogony in the last third part of the 8th century BCE as a Titan goddess of great honor with domains in sky, earth, and sea. Her place of origin is debated by scholars, but she had popular followings amongst the witches of Thessaly and an important sanctuary among the Carians of Asia Minor in Lagina.

Hecate was one of several deities worshiped in ancient Athens as a protector of the oikos (household), alongside Zeus, Hestia, Hermes, and Apollo. In the post-Christian writings of the Chaldean Oracles she was also regarded with (some) rulership over earth, sea, and sky, as well as a more universal role as Savior (Soteira), Mother of Angels and the Cosmic World Soul. Regarding the nature of her cult, it has been remarked, "she is more at home on the fringes than in the center of Greek polytheism. Intrinsically ambivalent and polymorphous, she straddles conventional boundaries and eludes definition."

Charon

“Charon, in Greek mythology, the son of Erebus and Nyx (Night), whose duty it was to ferry over the Rivers Styx and Acheron those souls of the deceased who had received the rites of burial. In payment he received the coin that was placed in the mouth of the corpse. In art, where he was first depicted in an Attic vase dating from about 500 BCE, Charon was represented as a morose and grisly old man. Charon appears in Aristophanes’ comedy Frogs (406 BCE); Virgilportrayed him in Aeneid, Book VI (1st century BCE); and he is a common character in the dialogues of Lucian (2nd century CE). In Etruscan mythology he was known as Charun and appeared as a death demon, armed with a hammer. Eventually he came to be regarded as the image of death and of the world below. As such he survives in Charos, or Charontas, the angel of death in modern Greek folklore.”

“Charon is the ferryman who, after receiving a soul from Hermes, would guide them across the rivers Styx and/or Acheron to the underworld. At funerals, the deceased traditionally had an obol placed over their eye or under their tongue, so they could pay Charon to take them across. If not, they were said to fly at the shores for one hundred years, until they were allowed to cross the river. To the Etruscans, Charon was considered a fearsome being – he wielded a hammer and was hook-nosed, bearded, and had animalistic ears with teeth. In other early Greek depictions, Charon was considered merely an ugly bearded man with a conical hat and tunic. Later on, in more modern Greek folklore, he was considered more angelic, like the Archangel Michael. Nevertheless, Charon was considered a terrifying being since his duty was to bring these souls to the underworld and no one would persuade him to do otherwise.”

Thanatos

“Thanatos was the god or personified spirit (daimon) of non-violent death. His touch was gentle, likened to that of his twin brother Hypnos (Sleep). Violent death was the domain of Thanatos' blood-craving sisters, the Keres, spirits of slaughter and disease.

Thanatos plays a prominent role in two myths. Once when he was sent to fetch Alkestis (Alcestis) to the underworld, he was driven off by Herakles in a fight. Another time he was captured by the criminal Sisyphos (Sisyphus) who trapped him in a sack so as to avoid death.

In Greek vase painting Thanatos was depicted as a winged, bearded older man, or more rarely as a beardless youth. He often appears in a scene from the Iliad, opposite his brother Hypnos (Sleep) carrying off the body of Sarpedon. In Roman sculptural reliefs he was portrayed as a youth holding a down-turned torch and wreath or butterfly which symbolised the soul of the dead.”

“Thanatos was the Greek god of nonviolent deaths. His name literally translates to “death” in Greek. In some myths, he’s considered to be a personified spirit of death rather than a god. The touch of Thanatos was gentle, often compared to the touch of Hypnos, who was the god of sleep. Thanatos and Hypnos are twins; this is where the saying, “Death, and his brother, sleep,” comes from.

Thanatos has a dominant role in two Greek myths. There’s a myth wherein he was sent to bring Alkestis back to the underworld. However, HERACLES drove him off through combat. In another myth, Sisyphus was a criminal who trapped Thanatos in a sack so that he wouldn’t die.

When Thanatos was depicted on vases, he was shown to be a bearded and winged old man. In some rare cases, he was depicted as a young person without any beard. In the Iliad, there’s a scene where he often appears with Hypnos to carry away Sarpedon’s body.”

Nyx

“NYX was the goddess of the night, one of the primordial gods (protogenoi) who emerged as the dawn of creation.

She was a child of Khaos (Chaos, Air), and coupling with Erebos (Darkness) she produced Aither (Aether, Light) and Hemera (Day). Alone she spawned a brood of dark spirits including the three Fates, Sleep, Death, Strife and Pain.

Nyx was an ancient deity usually envisaged as the very substance of the night--a veil of dark mists drawn across the sky to obscure the light of Aither, the shining blue of the heavens. Her opposite number was Hemera (Day) who scattered the mists of night at dawn.

In ancient art Nyx was depicted as a either a winged goddess or charioteer, sometimes crowned with an aureole of dark mists.”

“Nyx represents the night, beauty, and power. She represents the night because when the sunsets, she sets out on her chariot, with the darkness trailing behind. She represents beauty because she was beautiful and portrayed as one of the most beautiful goddesses on the face of the earth. And power is one of her values because both gods and men feared her greatly. She is said to be one of the first creatures to come into existence. According to some myths, she was daughter of Chaos, which means that she is a sister to some of the oldest deities in Greek myths, including Erubus (darkness), Gaia (the Earth), and Tartarus (the Underworld). “

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Charon-Greek-mythology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_underworld

https://www.theoi.com/Daimon/Thanatos.html

https://greekgodsandgoddesses.net/gods/thanatos/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persephone

https://www.theoi.com/Protogenos/Nyx.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hecate

https://rfgoddesses.weebly.com/nyx.html

[froggy-beans]

everyone feels like a liar these days (don’t know how not to feel that way)

This was written for @cinnamonrollstark for the 2019 Irondad Fic Exchange with the prompt “Tony comes back to life years after the snap. This is their reunion”. 

| 1/1 Chapters | 7,121 Words | No Archive Warnings Apply | Teen and Up Audiences | 

Summary: Written for the 2019 Irondad Fic Exchange for CinnamonrollStark. Prompt: Tony comes back to life after the Snap and this is their reunion. ---- Then, as Peter dodged bullets and destroyed drones, a flash of red and gold caught his eye. Attention elsewhere, he slammed into a drone and was sent sprawling to the ground. His mind raced a mile a minute.

It’s not real, Peter. It’s not real. It’s not real. You know what Beck is capable of, he’s only trying to distract you.

He could only watch, stunned, as he saw his childhood hero blasting drones out of the sky. Beneath his mask tears began to fall as he told himself it wasn’t real. How could it be?

link to story

               Peter didn’t know what to do. There were too many of them, too many drones. How was he supposed to destroy them all? There were thousands, hundreds of thousands, and he was one teenager with spider powers. Stickiness and super hearing weren’t extremely helpful when one was flying through the air. Why on earth had he believed he could take care of this by himself?

               Oh, right. He didn’t. Fury did. And where was Fury now? Cozy up in his tower watching the whole event unfold from his office window. Peter wished he had never agreed to go with him in Venice. He wished he could have just enjoyed his school trip and asked MJ out at the top of the Eifel Tower. God, life seemed so much simpler a year ago. So much simpler before Thanos and the Snap and . . . and . . . Tony’s death.

               Even now the thought was more painful than Peter could have imagined. Peter knew that Happy hadn’t meant to, but hearing his words made him feel so much worse. “He wouldn’t have done what he did if he didn’t know that you would be here after he was gone.” Tony’s death had never really gotten easier, not when he saw reminders around him all day every day, but that statement sent Peter reeling even further backward. And then there was the glasses. Tony had trusted him, and he gave them to Beck.

               Then, as Peter dodged bullets and destroyed drones, a flash of red and gold caught his eye. Attention elsewhere, he slammed into a drone and was sent sprawling to the ground. His mind raced a mile a minute.

               It’s not real, Peter. It’s not real. It’s not real. You know what Beck is capable of, he’s only trying to distract you.

               He could only watch, stunned, as he saw his childhood hero blasting drones out of the sky. Beneath his mask tears began to fall as he told himself it wasn’t real. How could it be? He watched the light leave Tony’s eyes, felt his heart stop under his palm. Beck had used what Peter had told him to stop him, to torture him. It was sick.

               “Stop messing with me, Beck!” He screamed, using the fresh anger and adrenaline pulsing through his veins to fight. He shot a web at the nearest drone and yanked it out of the sky as forcefully as he could, an explosion sending asphalt and concrete flying. As soon as his bravado had appeared it disappeared. His comms, always silent, came to life.

               “Slow down, kid. I’ll handle the rest of this. Happy is waiting for you a few blocks away, okay?” Came Tony’s voice. Peter shook his head.

               “I know he’s not real! I know you’re just trying to mess with me!” Peter shouted. He tried to have Karen shut off his comms, but she told him that he didn’t have access to that feature. Puzzled, Peter wondered if Beck had hacked his entire system instead of just the comm channel.

               “What do you mean? Peter, I’m not trying to mess with you.”

               “Yes, you are. Tony is dead. He’s dead. I know he isn’t here right now.”

               “Kid—just go to Happy and wait for me. He’ll explain everything.”

               “I’m not letting you win!”

               “Just listen to me for once in your life, Peter. I swear it will all make sense later—”

               “Why should I believe you?” Peter asked, voice weak. He didn’t want Beck to know how much he was affecting him, but he couldn’t keep the desperation and hope out of his words. His heart ached with the idea of this all being real.

               “Because I know that your favourite song is Pompeii by Bastille because you love the vocals and that May hates it because of how much you play it in the car. I know that you say you love Star Wars because it’s Ned’s favourite, but you really prefer Star Trek. I know that you used to hide your Spider-Man onesie in the ceiling so May wouldn’t find it—”

               “Okay, okay!” Peter said, tears flowing hot and heavy under the mask. “I believe you.”

               “Go to Happy, he’ll explain everything, and I’ll be there soon.”

               Peter nodded even though Tony couldn’t see him and took off in the direction Karen told him to go. She must have gotten the directions from FRIDAY. After a few blocks of swinging through the deserted London streets he found Happy, along with MJ, Ned, Betty, and Flash. Betty and Flash looked confused at Peter’s arrival, but he couldn’t have cared less.

               Peter ripped the mask off as soon as his feet touched the ground. Not long after he was on all fours and breathing heavily. What the hell? What the actual hell? Tony was alive?

               Happy came rushing over and lifted Peter into a sitting position. He was well trained in the art of Peter’s panic attacks, having become accustomed to them over the past year. He assured Peter that he was alright and everything was going to be fine, while rubbing reassuring circles on his back. Ned was soon at his side as well, though MJ hung back awkwardly with Flash and Betty.

               Several minutes later after Peter had (relatively) calmed down and drank some water, he asked Happy to kindly explain what the fuck was going on. Happy took a deep breath and shot a nervous glance to the rest of the teenagers.

“Cat’s already out of the bag, Happy. Just tell me,” He said tiredly. With no more adrenaline coursing through his veins a nap sounded like a very pleasant idea.

Happy explained the situation slowly, as one might do to a young child. Peter, who usually hated being talked down to, found that he didn’t mind. One could even say he appreciated the simple words even though they did not fit the situation. Tony had actually died on the battlefield, that much was true, but everything else Peter knew was a lie. From there the remains of SHIELD had taken his body back to one of their top-secret facilities (hence the lakeside funeral) and executed something called Project Tahiti. Project Tahiti was a top-secret program developed to bring back an Avenger or other important SHIELD member.

“So, what you’re telling me is that Tony died and then was brought back to life?” Peter asked. Happy nodded his head with a sigh. “Who else knows?”

“Pepper and Morgan, the remaining Avengers, Rhodey, and myself.”

“And he never told me?” Peter felt a sharp pain in his chest, almost like he’d been stabbed. Was I not important enough to tell? Did Happy even mean what he said on the plane?”

Peter was pulled from his stupor by the loud clank of the Iron Man suit landing behind them. He stood up quick enough to send his head spinning, but that didn’t matter. He barely waited for Tony to step out of the suit before the words came.

“How could you not tell me?” He shouted. Betrayal stung deep in his bones, more painful than any injury he had acquired in the past week. Tony’s eyes held emotions Peter couldn’t even begin to process at that moment, but Peter barreled forwards. “I mourned you! I cried for you!”

“Peter, listen—”

“I went to your funeral! I saw you die! I heard your heart stop beating!” Peter’s breathing was erratic, breaths coming in short bursts between his words. It had been a year since that god-awful day on that god-forsaken battlefield.

“Someone was supposed to tell you—”

“What do you mean?”

               “There was a list. I gave Fury a list of people that he was supposed to tell. I’m so sorry, I didn’t know that he didn’t tell you.” Tony looked sincere, but Peter didn’t want to hear another word. He picked his mask up from the ground and pulled it on roughly before swinging away.

               The comfort he had so wished for the past year stood three feet away from him and here he was, running away.

                 Rain fell softly that day, sending ripples throughout the lake and filling the air with the sweet smell of wet earth as the universe wept for the loss of her best defender. Peter watched the summer birds flying wide circles above him and wondered if they knew the true weight of this day.

               If Peter listened hard enough, he could hear the distant calls of bullfrogs from across the lake and quiet rustling of the leaves. It was worse, somehow, to know the world went on when your own was standing still.

               Peter glanced towards the tree line as Pepper lowered the wreath into the water, unable to watch the final piece of his mentor drift away from him to a place he couldn’t reach. He caught the orange flash of a robin’s wing as he gathered sticks for a nest and the light whistle, he gave whilst working. Another robin, this one sitting on the porch railing, whistled back.

               Will they remember him in a hundred years? In a thousand? And do the habitants of other planets know the true cost of their loved ones lost and found? Will they care, in the end, of the price of being able to hold them again?

               Peter stood still even as the crowd dispersed, lost in thoughts of another kind. He wondered what the world had thought. He wondered if Mother Nature had minded their absence. Maybe not, he supposed, maybe she didn’t even know.

                 Tomorrow morning the trees would rustle in the wind and flowers would grow, forgetful of today’s sorrow. Tomorrow morning the birds would sing their beautiful song, none the wiser of their loss. Tomorrow morning the sun would rise on a universe unaware of Tony Stark’s sacrifice, unaware of the true price of their salvation.

                                 The plane ride home could not have been more awkward if Peter had tried to make it that way. He sat in a row with MJ and Ned, all of them reeling from the recent revelation. Flash kept shooting the trio odd glances and Peter was worried he might stand up any second and announce Peter’s secret identity to all the passengers.

               “I shouldn’t have been so stupid earlier,” Peter sighed, rubbing a hand over his tired eyes. “Now Flash is going to tell everyone and make my life a hundred—no, five hundred—times harder.” His only escape was Spider-Man and soon he wouldn’t even get to have that.

               “No, he won’t,” MJ said firmly. “He wouldn’t even dare.”

               “And why is that? It’s not like I can blackmail him into keeping it a secret.”

               “Mr. Stark can.” Ned chimed in. Peter knew Ned was only trying to reassure him, but the name sent Peter over the edge of the precipice he had barely been holding onto in the first place.

               “Don’t say his fucking name, okay? I don’t need his help.” Peter stood abruptly and pushed his way to the aisle. He nearly tripped on Ned’s feet but managed to make it to the bathroom and slam the door shut before anger gripped him like a vise. He slid down the wall until he was sitting on the cold tile of the tiny airplane bathroom. There wasn’t enough room to stretch his legs, so he pulled his knees up to his chest and leaned his head against the wall. Peter took several deep breaths to calm himself down.

               His anger faded slowly until it became nothing more than a dull ache. Peter checked his watch (the one Tony had given him two—seven?—years ago) and saw that he had been in the bathroom for nearly twenty minutes. He knew he had to go back to his seat soon, for the descent at the very least, but that was the last thing he wanted to do. He didn’t want to see Flash’s stupid glances or listen to Ned’s empty reassurances.

               When he finally did go back to his seat, though, he was met with neither of these things. Flash appeared to be engrossed in some movie and Ned was playing on his computer. Peter sent a silent thank you to the universe. He would apologize to them later, of course, but he took the opportunity to try and rest. He would need it later when he finally tried to sort out his thoughts.

               The plane finally landed around one am. May was waiting for Peter at the gate with a sad smile. Peter assumed she would know by now what had happened between the news (who hadn’t stopped reporting on it since that morning) and Happy (who Peter was sure called her as soon as he was gone). May greeted him with a comforting hug.      

               “Ready to get your luggage?” She asked eventually, pulling away. Peter shook his head.

               “Don’t have any. It got blown up, remember?”

               “Oh, right,” May nodded. Peter, oddly, wanted to laugh. The whole situation just seemed so stupidly funny to him all of a sudden. Blown up luggage should be the least of his worries. He almost died this week. His friends almost died this week. His whole life got turned upside down (again) this week.

               “What are you laughing about, Peter?” May asked, confused. Peter just stood there laughing and drawing the attention of strangers.

               “My life is such a fucking joke, May. My whole goddamn life is a joke,” Peter said. May sighed and started leading him to the car. She couldn’t say she disagreed. Getting bit by a radioactive spider, meeting your childhood hero, fighting aliens, finding out your mentor wasn’t actually dead, and almost destroying Europe sounded like something straight out of a comic book.

               “How about we go home, okay? You can sleep, have breakfast, and then we’ll talk about all of this. Everything will be fine.”

               Peter just kept laughing.

                 Later that morning Peter heard May calling Happy. He tried to tune out most of their conversation, unwilling to listen to lovey-dovey comments coming from his aunt. Super hearing turned out to be more of a curse than a blessing when it came to living in an apartment. Especially when your neighbors were two young newlyweds. Peter hoped he never ran into them in the hallway, or god forbid, the elevator.

               Twenty minutes after the call ended Happy was knocking at the front door and Peter knew he would have to get out of bed. Instead of waiting for May to come get him, he pulled the covers off and grabbed a hoodie before heading to the kitchen. May liked the apartment colder than he did, but Peter wasn’t going to complain. At this point it was a miracle they even had an apartment to keep cold.

               Peter could feel the pair of them staring at him the second he stepped out of the hallway. He pretended not to notice as he grabbed a bowl from the cabinet and a box of Lucky Charms from the top of the fridge. The tension in the room was palpable. Peter ignored May and Happy for another five minutes while he ate, wishing he could ignore the situation all together. How, exactly, did one deal with their dead mentor/father-figure coming back to life? Was that the sort of thing you could go to counseling for?

               “So, Peter, about yesterday,” Happy started awkwardly, glancing towards May. She nodded and he kept going. “You did an amazing job handling Mysterio. There are a few things we need to discuss.”

               That’s an understatement.

               “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” Peter asked calmly, the very opposite of the emotions swirling in his mind. He knew that being hysterical wasn’t going to get him anywhere. “Tony said there was a list.”

               Happy nodded. “He gave Fury a list as soon as he woke up of people who were supposed to be told.”

               “So why did no one tell me?”

               “Because we didn’t think you could handle it.” Happy answered truthfully. After everything else that had happened, he hadn’t had it in him to lie to the poor kid.

               “What do you mean?”

               “The remaining Avengers, Fury, me and Ma—”

               “They didn’t think that you would be able to act like Tony was gone if you knew that he wasn’t.” May said quickly, shooting Happy a pointed glance. Peter didn’t miss May’s quick intervention. Were they hiding something else from him, too?

               Oh. Oh.

               “May,” Anger quickly took over despite Peter’s efforts to keep it hidden. The spoon he had been holding was like putty in his hands. “Did you know?”

               “Sweetie—”

               “Did you know?”

               “—it’s complicated—”

               “I don’t care!” Peter yelled. “Did you know?”

               “Yes, but you have to understand something, Peter. We didn’t—”

               “—think I could handle it, yeah I got that part. That’s low, May, really fucking low. All those times you woke me up from nightmares and caught me crying and you never told me.”

               Peter’s chair flung backwards when he shot up and went to his bedroom. He needed to be somewhere else before he did something he regretted. He pulled his backpack out of the closet and roughly filled it with clothes and his phone before pulling on his (severely damaged) suit. He didn’t bother shouting a goodbye before exiting through the window. They would realize he was gone soon enough on their own.

               Tony watched the tv half-heartedly. Every channel was stuck on one thing: him. He watched looped video after looped video of himself blowing up Mysterio’s drones. He had to admit, he did look pretty cool doing it, but that didn’t make up for the hundreds of calls from Nick Fury blowing up his phone. The man clearly didn’t know how to take a hint. Sometime in between the twentieth and twenty-fifth call, a plan hatched in Tony’s mind. On the twenty-seventh call he answered.

               “Nick Fury, you son of a goddamn bitch.” Tony said coldly. Pepper glared at him from the kitchen where her and Morgan were making lunch. Tony shrugged his shoulders. “You didn’t fucking tell him?”

               “Tell who what?”

               “Don’t play coy with me, asshole. You didn’t tell Peter I’m alive.”

               “We didn’t think he could pull it off.”

               “You have no fucking clue what he can pull off and thanks to you my kid ran away from me in London and refuses to talk to me.”

               “Stark, we have more pressing issues—”

               “The fuck we do.” Tony said finally, hanging up the call and tossing his phone to the other side of the couch. Pepper rolled her eyes.

               “This is why our daughter says things like ‘shit’.” She said. Morgan giggled innocently. Tony laughed despite the overwhelming stress he felt. Peter clearly wanted space, and as much as it would hurt, Tony knew he had to give it to him. Nobody could push Peter into doing something he didn’t want to. Peter would come to him when he was ready, and when he did, Tony would welcome him with open arms.

                               Peter had been on a normal patrol—as if anything could be considered normal anymore—when it happened. He had stopped in Times Square when he saw Quentin Beck’s face light up every screen, dumbstruck. Wasn’t he dead? Or in some high security prison somewhere at least? Peter perched on the nearest lamppost to watch the video.

               The film was shaky and loud, explosions and sirens filling the background. Beck was wearing his illusion suit, helmet cracked, and fabric torn. If Peter listened close enough, he could make out the faint blast of Tony’s repulsor in the background as he joined the battle. Anger filled Peter’s mind at the memory. A month later and he still couldn’t believe they hadn’t told him. Especially May. How could she keep that a secret as she comforted him about nightmares of Tony’s death? Through the panic attacks that often accompanied the reminder that he was gone?

               “I wish there was something I could do, honey,” She’d say, carding her fingers through Peter’s messy curls. You could have told me, Peter thought. You could have told me he was alive instead of letting me think that my curse had finally caught up to him.

               Peter’s anger only grew when Beck began speaking, looking around anxiously.

               “I don’t have much time left.” He said hurriedly. As much as Peter wanted to leave, he was curious as to what Beck was going to say. When he did finally call Nick Fury for a debrief, nothing was mentioned about a video.

“Tony Stark isn’t dead and—” Beck was cut off by a particularly loud blast that rocked the bridge he was hiding out in. “I know Spider-Man’s identity.”

Peter’s heart started to race as the New York passerby glanced at him. The very last thing he needed right now was another shit show. Of course, that’s when Beck announced his name, accompanied with a school photo from sophomore year. He looked slightly younger, but not different enough to not be recognizable now.

Peter felt everyone’s attention shift to him. He glanced around, mind going a million miles a minute. What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck. Peter shot a web to the nearest building and took off. It didn’t matter what direction. He couldn’t go back to Ned’s now. People would follow him there. He would be putting Ned and his family in danger.

And what about school in the fall? What about ever being able to leave the house again? There was only two people he could think to call, and he didn’t want to speak to either of them. Of course, he could try to call Nick Fury, but what would he do? He would probably use this as another chance to get Peter to work with SHIELD, which Peter didn’t want.

               Five minutes later Karen announced that Peter had a phone call from Ned. He almost didn’t answer, but thought better of it at the last second.

               “Where are you?” Ned asked worriedly. Peter tried to look for a landmark, but this area didn’t look familiar to him. Maybe his brain was just too muddled right now to figure out where he was.

               “I don’t know. Somewhere.”

               “As opposed to nowhere?”

               “Star-Lord told me about a place like that once, but I think its spelled with a K.”

               “Okay, we can talk about how incredibly awesome that is later. Right now we have bigger things to worry about.”

               “That’s the understatement of the year.”

               “Yeah, it is. But you need to get back here, dude. Mom is worried about you, and so am I.”

               “I can’t go back there, Ned. I don’t want to put you guys in danger. What if someone follows me?”

               “Well first off, you’re a superhero, so I’m not too worried. But if that doesn’t work out my dad keeps a gun somewhere. I’m pretty sure, at least. I guess I don’t know because I’ve never seen it, but he says he does and why would he lie about that—”

               “Okay, I get it. But if something happens—”

               “Then we’ll deal with it. Just come back, okay? Then we can sit down and actually talk about this.”

               “Okay,” Peter sighed. “I’m on my way back.”

               Karen hung up the phone and plotted a course home for Peter. She was worried he might get lost otherwise.

               “Should I contact Tony Stark?” She asked. Peter had told her not to bring him up last month (“Spider-Man is the only escape I have from all this anymore, Karen, don’t bring him up), but he had never actually programmed her not to do it.

               Peter debated her question. Tony would know what to do about this, for sure, but Peter wasn’t ready to see him.

               “No.” He said finally. He reached Ned’s bedroom window two minutes later, opening it and slipping in quickly. He found his best friend and his family sitting at the dining room table.

               Boy, he was in for a rough night. A very rough night.

                 A very rough night turned into a very rough week. Peter stayed in the apartment until he couldn’t stand it anymore (which with his ADHD and overactive spider energy, was only two days). On the third day he found an old baseball hat in Ned’s closet and borrowed his dad’s sunglasses, hoping to avoid any kind of unwanted attention. But it turns out that the more you don’t want attention, the more you seem to attract it.

               Five minutes after leaving the apartment building Peter dropped his phone facedown on the concrete (normally that wouldn’t happen, but his spider-sense had been going batshit crazy since what will be henceforth referred to as The Incident). He sighed at his luck and bent down to pick it up, the over-large sunglasses slipping right off. Peter scrambled to pick them up, but the damage was already done. Somebody had seen him.

               “Peter Parker?” The man who spotted him said. Peter tried to shake his head no and stammered out a response.

               “No, no—”

               “Hey! It’s Spider-Man!” Another person shouted. All eyes were turned to Peter as he tried to make excuses, tried to convince them that he wasn’t who they thought he was. In the end, he ended up running back to the apartment as fast as he could while people took pictures and tried to ask questions. If just walking down the street was a nightmare, he didn’t want to know what kind of hell school in the fall would be.

               Peter suspected that Flash would be even worse than before, if that was possible. Now that he knew the kid he had bullied for years was Spider-Man he would try to be friends with him. Everyone at school was probably going to try and be friends with him, save for the ones who thought enhanced individuals were a disease and not to be interacted with.

               Maybe it was incredibly twisted, but it was sort of comforting that not everybody would want to talk to him. Peter was already used to people hating him (although he could never figure out why, because he never bothered anyone), so a few more wouldn’t matter.

               Somehow Peter found himself back not at Ned’s apartment, but May’s. He stared at the seven story building wistfully, every muscle in his tired body aching to step through the front door. May couldn’t solve all this, try as she might, but she knew how to comfort Peter. She would make hot chocolate with exactly four marshmallows, no more, no less, and put on some old movie they’d seen a million times while they talked.              

               No matter how much Peter’s feet wanted to carry him up the stairs and into the apartment, he couldn’t make them. Instead they took him back down the familiar path to Ned’s apartment, each footstep a pang in his heart. It had been over a month since he’d seen or spoken to her last. Would she even want to see him after the stunt he pulled?

               Deep down Peter knew the answer was yes, but he wasn’t quite ready to face her yet. He could still barely process the fact that his dad mentor wasn’t truly dead and that everyone had thought him incapable of handling the truth and keeping the secret. It took time to face things like that when someone didn’t have to worry about much else, let alone dealing with an identity reveal and Peter’s whole life being turned upside down (again).

               Maybe tomorrow, Peter thought, I’ll be ready.

                 After his last shit show of an outing, Peter decided to stay in indefinitely. He drove Ned’s family crazy by constantly doing pushups at every turn and using the doorways to practice his pull-ups. None of them mentioned his crazy behavior for worry of sending Peter into an even more mentally precarious state. Ned walked in on him watching a nature documentary about spiders once at three in the morning and when one of the spiders got eaten by a bird, he started crying. Not normal, sniffle crying, but full on sobs.

               “How could you?” Peter said to the bird, unaware of Ned’s position in the doorway behind him. Ned wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry or just disappear like nothing had happened. In the end he had gone with the third option, but his escape was cut short when Peter turned around to search for a box of tissues. Peter stared at him owlishly for a moment before fresh tears began to fall.

               “How could the—the bird do that, Ned?” He’d asked. Ned sighed. He’d done some weird shit to help Peter out before, but this was a whole new level.

               “It was just the spider’s time, Peter. That’s nature. The circle of life.” Ned had answered. This was not the correct answer, however, and made Peter cry harder.

               “But David had so much to live for.”

               “David?”

               “The spider, Ned! His name was David and he had a family! Mr. Nature Guy said it himself!”

               “Peter, I think its time for you to go to bed.”

               “I’m not tired.” Peter protested, barely holding back a yawn. Somehow Ned managed to wrestle him into bed and Peter fell asleep before his head hit the pillow. Ned hadn’t mentioned that incident to his parents, but they were probably woken up by Peter’s not-so-silent breakdown.

               In short, Peter was a mess. Ned understood why Peter didn’t want to talk to his family, but he could tell it was really wearing on him. Four days after what will be referred to as the David Incident, Ned tried to discuss the situation with him. It was late, probably sometime after eleven, and Ned’s parents had already gone to sleep. The only reason the pair were awake was because they were finishing up a movie.

               “It’s been over a month.” Ned started casually. He glanced sideways at his best friend to see his reaction, but Peter’s expression remained neutral. “Since the thing with Mr. Stark.”

               Mr. Stark had told Ned multiple times to call him Tony, but it felt weird to call his childhood hero by his first name. Peter had had the same issue at first.

               “I think you should talk to him.” Ned continued.

               “Why? He hasn’t tried to talk to me.”

               “He knows you wouldn’t pick up the phone. Everyone knows how stubborn you are. ”

               “I’m not being stubborn—”

               “He calls me. And my parents. May does too, to make sure that you’re okay and stuff. They’re worried about you. They were only trying to give you space because that’s what you wanted.”

               Peter’s mouth hung open, whatever argument he had prepared gone.

               “It was a really shit thing to do, alright, not telling you that Mr. Stark was still alive. But now that you know he is alive, why are you wasting time by avoiding him? I don’t know about you, but if I thought my dad was dead and then it turned out he wasn’t, I would talk to him. Mr. Stark didn’t know that nobody told you because he was stuck in some shield facility somewhere. You can be mad at May and Happy and Pepper all you want, I totally would be too, but Mr. Stark wasn’t trying to hide anything from you. He might be Iron Man, but sometimes even he can’t control who’s pulling the strings.”

               “Ned,” Peter said, eyebrows drawn together in thought. “I have to go.”

               New York City was never quiet, but it seemed to be as Peter walked through the residential streets of Queens. His thoughts were much louder than anything else around him at the moment. He’d had no idea that May and Tony called to check on him. He was still mad at May, Happy, and Pepper, but those bridges would be slow to repair. He loved them still, of course, but it was hard to think of them without being angry. They didn’t trust him. They hadn’t believed in him. And it hurt.

               But, hopefully, he could fix the mess he’d made with Tony. At the very least he could try.

                 Tony was asleep when his phone rang. Pepper shifted beside him and mumbled something that Tony couldn’t quite catch, though he suspected it was something along the lines of, “What is it?”. Tony didn’t answer, fumbling around for his phone on the nightstand. The screen practically blinded him before FRIDAY adjusted the brightness. When he could see again the name Peter Parker flashed across the screen.

               “It’s Peter,” Tony said, suddenly wide awake. It had been a month and a half since the pair had spoken. Peter had wanted space and Tony wasn’t going to begrudge him that, no matter how much it hurt. Yelling at Nick Fury had made him feel better, but only temporarily.  

               “What?” Pepper asked.

               “It’s Peter,” Tony repeated. The excitement at the call quickly turned to dread as he realized the time. Was Peter in trouble? Before his mind could fall further down the rabbit hole, Tony pressed the answer button.

               “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Tony asked anxiously, sitting up. A thousand possibilities, each more terrible than the last, played out in his mind in the moments it took Peter to answer.

               “Yeah I’m—I’m fine.” Peter answered. Tony released the breath he hadn’t noticed he was holding. Thank god. “I was just wondering if, um, if I could come over?”

               “Yes, yes. Of course, Peter, you can always come over. Do you need me to pick you up?”

               “Yeah. I’m a few blocks away from Ned’s apartment in Queens—” Peter was cut off by someone shouting in the background. The only words Tony heard were “look”, “Spider-man”, and “over”.

               “Is everything okay over there, Peter?”

               “Come on guys, we can work this out. There’s no need for anyone to get shot tonight—”

               “Peter?”

               Tony heard three things: a gunshot, a scream, and the sound of someone hitting concrete. He immediately jumped out of bed and ran downstairs. Barely a minute later Tony was suited up and flying towards New York City. FRIDAY located Peter using his phone.

               “Hang in there, kid. I’m on my  way and then Dr. Cho will get you all fixed up, okay? Just hang in there. Can you do that for me?”

               Some by miracle Peter answered. “They got away.”

               “I’m not worried about that right now, Peter. I’m worried about you. You gotta sit tight for a few minutes until I get there, okay?”

               “Okay.”

               In Tony’s opinion it took far too long to find Peter. He landed the suit on some quiet residential street in Queens and ordered FRIDAY to scan vitals as he stepped out of the suit. Peter was curled up on the ground and shivering. He quickly rolled the kid onto his back to examine the bullet wound, eliciting a moan from Peter.

               “I know it hurts, buddy, I’m sorry, but I have to see it. Soon we’ll be back at the compound and we can give you the Captain America drugs. Then it won’t hurt at all.”

               Blood had soaked through Peter’s t-shirt and the light jacket he was wearing, turning the blue t-shirt a deep purple. It was everywhere. On Peter’s shirt, on the sidewalk, on Tony’s hands. God. There was so much of it that Tony couldn’t even figure out where the wound was. He would have to hope that Cho could locate it as soon as they got to the compound, or at least before Peter’s super healing kicked in.

               Tony hated to leave Peter’s side for even  a second, but he had to put the suit back on before he could carry Peter to the compound. Peter was light in his arms, head lolling as Tony picked him up. Tony prayed to every god he’d ever heard of that Peter would make it to the compound. How cruel it would be of fate to split them apart now after all they’d fought through.

                 Tony didn’t think he would ever forget the image of his kid on the operating table at three in the morning. Somehow there was even more blood than before, and yet Dr. Cho and her colleagues were as collected as ever. Tony knew that Cho was worried even if she didn’t show it. In the couple years before the Snap she had gotten to know Peter quite well while they worked on discovering the limits of his powers.

               Three and a half hours later, Peter was out of surgery. Dr. Cho decided to keep him in an observation room instead of taking him back to his bedroom at the compound just in case there were any complications. She didn’t expect any, but she decided to err on the side of caution.

               “He’s stable now, but I don’t want to take any chances. If you need anything or if something seems off, tell FRIDAY and she’ll let me know.” Dr. Cho said after briefly explaining Peter’s situation. “He must be extremely lucky. The bullet barely missed his spine. If he’d been shot half an inch to the left, he would have been paralyzed.”

               “Thank you.” Tony replied.

               “Of course,” Dr. Cho smiled. “We’re going to keep him asleep for awhile to let his super healing do its job. You should probably try to rest.”

               “You know I can’t.” Tony sighed. If something bad happened while he was asleep, he would never forgive himself.

               “I know.”

               Moonlight was streaming through the windows when Peter opened his eyes. Everything seemed fuzzy around the edges, as though it wasn’t quite real. Through the muddled fog of his mind he recognized the med bay. What was he there for? The last thing he remembered was watching a movie with Ned in the living room.

               Tony was sitting quietly in a chair next to the bed, phone in hand. But that wasn’t right. It couldn’t be. He was . . . dead. Oh, Peter thought, I must be dreaming. These sorts of dreams had happened to Peter before. Sometimes is was Tony, sometimes it was Ben.

               He hated them. He always woke up in the morning with a fresh wave of sadness, pillow wet with tears. It was like starting the seven stages of grief all over again.

               A few moments later, maybe sensing Peter’s staring, Tony looked up at him. “Hey sleepy head, how was your nap? You were out the whole day.”

               “It was fine.” Peter answered. He hated the excitement he felt at talking to Tony again, even if it was all in his mind. “I’m still tired though.”    

               “Go back to bed, then, kiddo. It’s almost midnight anyway.”

               “I don’t want to.” Peter said. “If I go back to sleep then I’ll wake up in real life and you won’t be there.”

               “What makes you think I won’t be there?” Tony was confused. It must have been the drugs. Cho did say that he would probably be dazed when he woke up.

               “Because you’re dead. You’ve been gone for over a year.”

               “I’m not dead. Underoos, I’m right here. Don’t you remember?”

               “I remember the first time you called me that,” Peter said idly, changing the topic. “I was so excited to go to Germany even though I was nervous. You were the first person that really believed in Spider-Man and I wanted to make you proud.”

               “I am proud of you.”

               “And the new suit was super cool. It probably would have been embarrassing if I’d shown up to the airport in the old one. Can you imagine if I’d actually met the Avengers dressed like that?” Peter wrinkled his nose at the thought. He was incredibly glad that hadn’t happened, although it probably didn’t make a difference anyway. There were hundreds of videos of him in that suit on YouTube.

               “Yeah, it might have been a little rough, but I’m sure everyone would have loved you anyway.”

               “Really?”

               “Of course. We all start somewhere, right?”

               “Yeah,” Peter said, pausing to stifle a yawn. Tony smiled at the memory of fourteen-year old Peter Parker walking in the door with headphones in. He was smaller back then, more innocent. How Tony wished he could go back in time and prevent Peter from ever being involved in any of this. Deep down, though, he knew that he couldn’t. Peter would have never stopped being Spider-Man. The least that Tony could do was protect him while he did it.

               “Get some more rest, kiddo. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

               “No, you won’t,” Peter sighed. The tears didn’t have a chance to fall before he was asleep again. Tony hated to see Peter upset, but the only way to fix this was for him to sleep off the rest of the drugs. Until then, Tony would be waiting in the worlds most uncomfortable chair at his bedside.  

               Next time Peter woke up the August sun was shining cheerfully through the med bay window. The chair next to his bed was empty and there was no sign of anyone else having been in the room except for Peter. Because Tony was gone. Because he was never really there in the first place.

               “Oh, you’re awake.” Tony said, surprised. He had left to get a quick snack before Peter woke up. “I hadn’t expected you to be up yet, but if you’re hungry I can—hey, hey,  what’s wrong?”

               Peter looked up at the sound of Tony’s voice, crying. “What?”

               “Do you need more pain killers? Cho said they shouldn’t have worn off but I guess you never know with your special metabolism.”

               “Tony?” Peter’s voice was impossibly quiet, as if he was afraid that if he spoke any louder the world would shatter around him.

               “. . . Yes?” Was the anesthesia still messing with Peter’s head? Peter was quiet for a minute as Tony set his coffee down on the night table and sit at the foot of the bed. He was careful not to jostle Peter too much for fear of hurting him.

               “I’m so sorry.” He said finally, bringing a fresh wave of tears to the surface. He hated crying—he had been doing it so much lately—but he didn’t care this time.

               “Me too, kiddo, me too. I love you.”

               “I love you too.”

               Peter’s life was still upside down, and would be for a while, but he was relieved. He loved Ned and his family, he truly did, but they didn’t understand. They never could. But Tony could. He understood being a superhero, he understood being famous as a teenager, and he understood the trauma that came along with both. He could help him through it.

               Maybe, just maybe, everything would turn out okay.

@irondad-fic-exchange

[wickedwitch1997]

Katara, of the Fire Nation - Chapter 22

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18   Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21

Katara tries to escape the ice that encases her, but Tikali tightens the ice around her and her hands clamp, unable to move. The creature wrapped around his arm hisses as Katara snarls a foul curse at him.

“You’re supposed to be in the fire nation,” Tikali tsks, circling around Katara like a vulture, “Sitting on the fire lords lap, like a good little bitch.”

Katara grits her teeth and tries to squirm as the ice bites into her, both Tikali and the creature on his arm stare at her with predatory eyes.

“What are you doing here?” Tikali says, looking Katara up and down.

“You kidnapped my father,” Katara snarls, “What, did you think I’d never find out?”

“So you think you’d come here and stop me?” Tikali laughs, the creature coils around his arm tighter, “I won the chiefdom, fair and square.”

Katara pulls against the ice and Tikali laughs again, mocking her.

“Do you know why you’re so invaluable?” Tikali asks, Katara stops struggling as Tikali grabs a piece of her hair and twirls it around her thumb, “Do you know why the fire lord wanted you so badly?”

“Because he thought I was the avatar,” Katara sighs, rolling her eyes.

“You were destined to become the avatar,” Tikali says, “Aang was supposed to reign as avatar for seventy-three years, then, when he died, you were supposed to become the next avatar.”

“So?” Katara shrugs, “Aang lived, and I didn’t become the avatar.”

“But a piece of that spark, that avatar flame, is inside of you,” Tikali says, he runs his hands over the ice that traps Katara, “I bet you’re wondering how I know this.”

“I’m not.”

“This is Norouge,” Tikali says, ignoring Katara as he holds up the arm that the creature is wrapped around, “He is a spirit.”

The creature slithers off of Tikali’s arm and then onto the ice that encases Katara.

“I found him in the northern spirit oasis,” he continues, watching the spirit as it wraps around Katara’s neck like a rope, “He is the reason I knew that your avatar was close. He is the reason I knew you were close. I must say, I was disappointed when you didn’t try and stop me for killing your father last night, I sent all my guards away and gave you an opportunity to come for me, I was defenceless after all. And yet you left, without even a hint that you were there, if it wasn’t for Norouge I wouldn’t have even known. Was my trap too obvious?”

Katara snarls as she pushes against the ice, trying desperately to free herself.

“Ah ah ah,” Tikali tsks, waving his finger at her, “Don’t go trying to escape, Norouge is not very fond of quick movements.”

The spirit tightens around Katara’s neck and spits a hiss at her.

“What do you want with me?” Katara asks, glaring at Tikali as the spirit relaxes its hold.

“I don’t care if you live or die,” Tikali says, “You’re not that important, no, my goal is to unite the two nations and overthrow the fire nation.”

“Why?” Katara asks.

“Why?!” Tikali echoes with a laugh, “Because they’re one step away from starting another hundred year war! You have no idea how many people I lost to that war, I was forced into hiding because of that war. My mother sent me away, to keep my powers out of the fire lords grasp, she thought that it was I who was to be the next avatar.”

“Zuko isn’t like his father,” Katara says, “aren’t you tired of wars? He wants peace, just as much as you do.”

“Peace will never come until the fire nation feels what we felt!” Tikali snaps, the spirit tightens around Katara’s neck again and she snarls at it.

“Help me,” Tikali says, Katara looks at him in shock as he steps towards her and places his hand on the ice, “With your powers, we could take down the fire lord, we could start a new era where fire does not have a place in the world.”

“So you’ll eradicate an entire civilisation, just for revenge?” Katara gapes, “You’re a madman!”

“They eradicated the air nomads,” Tikali shrugs, “They almost eradicated us too. Why shouldn’t they feel the fear we felt?”

“Why should we aid in the distribution of fear and hate?” Katara asks, as she talks she distracts Tikali, taking his attention off her movements beneath the ice, “The Phoenix King has fallen, let the wars fall with him.”

“Of course,” Tikali sighs, rolling his eyes, “I would expect nothing less from the Fire Lord’s weapon, you’re not water tribe, you don’t understand.”

Katara has had enough of talking, the ice around her starts to crack, and whine under pressure.

“What are you doing?” Tikali says, stepping back in shock as the ice continues to crack, “How are you doing that?”

The fire in Katara’s blood has helped her melt the ice around her hands, now, with her hands freed, she bends the ice, making it crack as the moon reaches its peak. The ice shatters and Katara grabs the spirit that is tightening around her throat, she squeezes it and it hisses in pain before disappearing.

Katara turns her gaze to Tikali and his eyes widen in horror as the fire in her eyes roar.

“I am Katara, of the Fire Nation and Water Tribe,” she snarls as she brings her hands up, “You killed my father, prepare to die.”

Tikali’s eyes widen as he falls to his knees, the sound of his body tightening under her control make’s Katara smile. She can hear his veins constricting as moving at her command, but before Katara can end it, Sokka bursts into the room and looks at the sight before him. Katara twists Tikali under her hands, she looks at her brother and he frowns.

“Don’t,” Sokka says, his voice breathless as he watches his sister.

“Why not?” Katara growls, her eyes turning back to Tikali, “Why should I let this monster live? So Aang can take his bending? So he can live in a cell? So he can live in a cell? He’ll kill again, Sokka, if we don’t stop this now, there will never be peace.”

“Then let me do it,” Sokka says, he unsheathes his sword and Katara looks to him in shock, “You don’t need his blood on your hands.”

“Your hands are shaking, Sokka, let me do it,” Katara says, noticing the way Sokka’s sword trembles.

But Sokka doesn’t listen, he lets out a war cry and then shoves his sword through Tikali’s chest, Katara listens to the sound of the sword slicing through Tikali’s entire life and poke out through his back.

Sokka steps back and Katara stops bending, Tikali’s lifeless body slumps forward, with the sword’s blade sticking out of his back, slick with his blood.

Sokka’s hands are still shaking, he turns back to his sister and tears well in his eyes.

“Hey,” Katara breathes, she pulls her brother close and holds him as he wraps his arms around her waist, “It’s ok,” Katara soothes as Sokka presses his forehead to her shoulder.

“Katara,” a voice stammers, Katara looks to the door where Aang stands, pale-faced and wide-eyed.

Two days pass and Katara stays in the water tribe for Hakoda’s funeral, she watches as a small canoe is prepared for her father, the tribe come together to paint the canoe and lay wreaths of silk and fish appease the spirits.

Katara watches the people as they mull around, she feels empty, cold and alone. Sokka is rundown with his new responsibilities as chief, Toph and Suki spend their time helping rebuild from the damage caused during the riot, Aang mills around, helping where he can but mostly avoiding Katara and Sokka.

Katara feels alone, she feels out of place at the tribe and she can’t wait to leave. But that afternoon a ship appears on the horizon, a royal Fire Nation ship, decorated with the royal coat of arms.

Kiki told Zuko, she received a letter from her father, then Zuko received a letter from Sokka, both explained what happened, how Hakoda had lost his life in what they were referring to as ‘the incident’. But then Zuko received a letter from Katara and it made his heart leap into his throat.

In her shaky handwriting, it read:

Dearest Zuko. Everything is fine, the threat has been neutralised, the earth king has been informed of the situation and will hopefully be rethinking his stance on war with the Fire Nation. However, I must stay in the tribe for a few more days, there were casualties, Sokka is chief now. Katara.

Zuko can tell that Katara’s hand was shaking when she wrote the letter, she couldn’t even bring herself to write the words ‘my father is dead’, there is a small droplet stain on the corner of the note, a tear must have fallen as she wrote the letter.

Zuko didn’t consult with his council, he didn’t want their opinion on his decision, so he places a regent in control and then finds Kiki, telling her that he will accompany her on her trip to the Southern Water Tribe.  

He has his ship ready for him and his things packed by that afternoon and as the sun sets, the ship leaves the Fire Nation.

Zuko hasn’t been on a ship for months, not since he returned home as the saviour prince to the Fire Nation. Zuko remembers the time he would spend with Katara during their years of searching for the avatar; they would train for hours on the deck, sparing together with Iroh instructing them.

Zuko was so angry back then, he was filled with rage and anger; he is a different man now.

Now, his heart seems to be pulling him towards the south, yearning for Katara. He has missed her terribly, and the thought of her being in pain makes his chest feel tight as his heart races.

Katara watches as the ship docks, she watches as Kiki races off the ship, into the arms of her awaiting father.

Katara expects that to be the last of the visitors, no matter how much she hopes, she doesn’t expect Zuko to leave the Fire Nation, not now.

But Katara is wrong, Zuko steps onto the docks, and Katara’s heart starts to race.

“Katara,” Zuko breathes.

Katara doesn’t say a word, she breathes out a sigh of relief and then races into his arms, she throws her arms around his shoulders and he holds her close.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, burying his nose into the crook of Katara’s neck.

Katara presses into Zuko as his grip tightens around her waist.

When Katara lets go, so does Zuko, he lets her step out of his arms and then looks up at him with wide eyes.

“I’ve missed you,” Katara breathes, she wipes her eyes and then smiles As Zuko caresses her cheek.

“ZUKO!” a voice calls, suddenly the rest of the gang are on the docks, including Aang who races towards the Fire Lord.

Katara takes a step back from Zuko and then rubs her arm as the gang greet Zuko, wrapping him in their arms and smiling.

“Hi, guys,” Zuko beams.

“What are you doing here?” Aang asks, smiling up at maybe the only person who doesn’t hate him at the moment.

Zuko looks to Katara out the corner of his eye and then to Sokka.

“I heard what had happened,” Zuko says, “I’ve come to offer my condolences.”

Zuko holds out a hand to Sokka and the new chief, they grab each other’s hands and then Zuko pulls Sokka into a hug.

“Thanks, man,” Sokka laughs, stepping out of Zuko’s hold as he sniffs and tries not to cry, “Come on, we have a lot to catch up on.”

Katara smiles as she watches her brother wrap his arm around Zuko’s shoulders and lead him into the tribe.

Zuko doesn’t know, nor does Kiki, that Aang is the reason why Hakoda is dead. Katara, and the rest of the gang figured that it wasn’t their place to tell the others.

Sokka shows Zuko around the tribe, the rest of the gang go around with Zuko, catching up on all the things they’ve missed out on over the last six months.

Katara trails behind the group before splitting from them, she wanders around alone for a while before finding herself walking into the sacred hut.

“Katara,” the mortician says, greeting Katara with a warm smile.

“Can I see him?” Katara asks, her hands shaking as she clenches them in front of her.

The woman nods her head and then takes her further into the hut, Chief Hakoda is laying on a table made of ice, he is dressed in ceremonial clothes and his face is lined with the light blue paint of their tribe.

“I’m sorry,” Katara breathes, standing over her father, “I should have done something, I should have stopped him. There was so much… so much more that I had to say to you,” Katara’s voice wavers as tears well in her eyes, “I never got the chance… Dad, I don’t know what I’m doing.” Katara slips her hand into her fathers, “I still need you, and there is so much I needed to say to you. Dad…” Katara sucks in a deep breath and tries to blink away her tears, “I hated you…” she finally admits, “For a long... for a long time I hated you. I thought you abandoned me, every night I would pray to the spirits… I’d pray that you would come find me and take me home. I hated how you put the war over me, and I hated that you let them take me away… I was so angry when you left again, when you let the war separate us, again. I hope you’re with mum, I hope you join her in the spirit world and are at peace. I hope…” Katara’s voice cracks as she squeezes her father’s hands, “Spirits, I wish you would just squeeze my hand… I hope I can make you proud… I hope I can prove myself a legacy you’ll be proud of.”

Katara lets go of her father’s hand and wipes her eyes, she kisses her father’s cold cheek and then walks out of the hut. That night, as the sun dips below the horizon, Katara and Sokka lead the people out to the coastline, they both wear ceremonial clothes and carry twin bows, each with a single arrow.

“Today, we say goodbye to our beloved chief,” an elder says, standing next to the canoe, “We send him into the great beyond, where we pray he may find peace in the waves. Hakoda was a son,” the elder looks to where Gran-Gran stands in the front of the crowd, “He was a father,” the elder looks to Katara and Sokka, both of whom stand hard-faced, not showing any hint of emotion, “And he was a husband. But he was also our chief; the chief the people chose, he protected us and served us as the greatest chief he could be, and for that, he will live eternal in the spirit lands.”

Two of Hakoda’s closest friends wade into the shallow waters, they push Hakoda out as Katara and Sokka nock their arrows. The men walk with the canoe until they stand up to their armpits in the icy water.

Katara and Sokka hold their bows up and the elder lights the arrows on fire. Katara and Sokka draw the arrows back at the same time, Katara steadies her breath and then lets her arrow fly at the same time as her brother. Both arrows find their mark, one at the foot of the boat, and one at the head, the canoe quickly catches fire and Katara watches her father burn.

It is of paramount importance that she does not cry, she holds back her tears as the flames dance on the water, if Katara or Sokka were to cry, it would be a sign, a sign that Hakoda’s spirit is not at peace, for if it were, surely the chief’s loved ones would not be crying.

“And now, we welcome the next chief,” the elder says after a moment of silence, “Sokka, son of Hakoda and Kya.”

Katara watches as her brother steps forward and kneels at the elder’s feet.

“A new moon rises,” the elder says, he grabs a bowl of light blue paint and swirls it with his thumb, “The tide rises to welcome the new chief.”

Sokka is marked by the elder, painted with the lines of a chief, the same lines that were painted on their father.

“Rise, young wolf,” the elder commends.

Sokka stands to his feet and then turns to his people, in response, his people lift their heads and howl out, accepting Sokka as their new chief.

That night celebrations commence, the people celebrate their chiefs, they dance around a bonfire and drink deeply from their cups.

“You disappeared,” Zuko says, walking up to Katara as she watches the celebrations from the top of a nearby hut.

“I had to do something important,” Katara says, watching as the fire reaches for the stars. Sokka dances with his people, with Suki and Toph, laughing as the sour yak’s milk buzzes in his blood.

“You look beautiful,” Zuko compliments, eyeing the white furs of Katara’s dress.

“I am Tui,” Katara proclaims, leaning back and looking up to the moon, “Daughter of the great moon, she who watches over all, sister to the great la,” Katara gestures to her brother and then offers Zuko a sip of her drink.

“Not a fan of yak’s milk,” he says holding up a hand.

“It’s wine,” Katara says, she grabs the bottle from behind her and fills her cup, “nabbed it from the Tikali’s cellar.”

Zuko accepts the wine and sips from Katara’s cup, the wine is sweet and dances on his tongue playfully.

“It’s good,” he says, lowering the cup from his lips, “So, why aren’t you down at the festival of chief’s?”

“There are too many people,” Katara says, swinging her legs over the edge of the hut’s roof, “Too much noise.”

Zuko watches as Katara drinks straight from the bottle.

“I love you,” Katara says, putting the bottle down as she looks to Zuko, “I’m in love with you.”

Zuko’s eyes widen, his heart races as those words make his skin tingle and the fire in his blood race.

“I love you too,” Zuko says, smiling as he takes Katara’s hands, “And I’m here for you,” Zuko adds, “Whatever you need.”

Katara smiles and leans into Zuko’s shoulder, he puts his arm around and she takes another deep drink from the bottle.

The next thing Katara knows, is that she’s waking up in a pile of furs, she’s stark naked and she feels like she’s swallowed a whole dessert.

Katara rolls over and realises that this isn’t her bed, she frowns and holds the furs to her chest as she sits up and finds that she isn’t in her hut wither. Katara’s head throbs as she looks around the room, trying to figure out what happened last night, her legs ache as she has a dull memory of dancing by the fires.

“Well, good morning you,” Zuko says, walking into the room, he is shirtless with water droplets gleaming on his skin.

Katara’s heart races as fear spikes through her, “We didn’t…” Katara stammers as Zuko rubs the back of his neck with a towel, “Zuko… did we…?”

“No,” Zuko laughs, “No we didn’t, you were just determined to get naked.”

“What happened last night?” Katara groans, putting her head in her hands.

“Well, you fell off the roof,” Zuko says, throwing his towel aside as he rolls back into bed, “you found that absolutely hilarious while I freaked out and tried to convince you to stop drinking.”

Katara winces as she can hear the echo of her laughter in her mind.

“Then, you ran from me,” Zuko explains, he slides behind Katara and holds her in his arms, “calling for me to catch you, you ran into the party and I found you dancing with other drunkards. And, let's see, what happened next? Oh, that’s right, you started stripping off your clothes, claiming that you were the queen of the water tribe and that you would dance under the moon.”

“I didn’t,” Katara groans in shame, “Tell me you were able to stop me.”

“I couldn’t get you to stop,” Zuko says, as Katara gets out of bed and looks for her clothes, “So I threw you over my shoulder and tried to take you home.”

“Then why aren’t I there?” Katara asks, finding her dress.

“Because you wouldn’t tell me where it was,” Zuko chuckles, “You just kept struggling against me so I carried you here.”

Katara finds her underwear and then her leggings, but her parka is missing, so are her gloves and her shoes.

“You then stripped down and fell into my bed, asleep before you hit the mattress,” Zuko says, he gets out of bed as Katara pulls on her clothes.

“If anyone sees me like this… oh spirits, what will they think?” Katara hisses as she pins her hair off her face.

“Don’t worry, most of the tribe is still blacked out,” Zuko assures, “Your people sure know how to drink.”

“We could drink any fire bender under the table,” Katara says with a wink, she turns to the door, intending to leave, to go home and change.

“Kat,” Zuko breathes, he takes Katara’s hand and turns her back to him, “We need to talk.”

Katara’s eyes widen as a feeling of dread fills her, she looks up to Zuko and he squeezes her hand.

“Last night, before you fell off the roof, you told me that you had regrets,” Zuko says, sitting with Katara on the fur rug on the floor.

“I was drunk,” Katara says with a dismissive wave, “I don’t even remember what I said.”

“You said that you wished you could have spent more time here, in your ancestral home,” Zuko says, Katara looks to her hands.

Sure, Katara felt like there was something missing in her blood, there is a part of her that longs to stay within her tribe, to grow and heal from the fires that burned her.

“Katara, you’re still young, we’re still young,” Zuko says, taking Katara’s hands and looking in her eyes, “I’m bound by duty to return to the Fire Nation, but you don’t have to.”

Katara’s heart races as she is placed between her love and her tribe.

“You may be of the Fire Nation, but the Water Tribe is in your blood,” Zuko says, continuing as Katara is at war with herself.

“Are you breaking up with me?” Katara asks, looking up to Zuko with tears welling in her eyes.

“No,” Zuko laughs, “No, Katara, never. But I don’t want you to live with regrets, I want you to experience all the things you couldn’t, and when you decide, you can come back to the Fire Nation, and we’ll figure out what this-” Zuko gestures between himself and Katara for effect, “-is. Even if you find out that it’s not what you want, well then… we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

“I love you,” Katara says, “And I don’t want this to end, but you’re right, I do want to be in the tribe, just for a little longer.”

“Of course,” Zuko smiles, he pulls Katara into his lap and holds her, “You need to be with your people, take all the time you need. I love you, Katara.”

Don’t worry guys, i know this chapter ended kind of harshly, i will have the next chapter up within minutes of posting this one!

Chapter 23

@squishysuho @the-weird-fob-fangirl@thegaang6@pepewntz@solidaritree@waitingtillthesmilescomeback@miraculoushipping@auzlon@tiernanka@lovelylittleladyl@standby-reality    @beealexageek @danielslilangel, @azn-quxxn

[excerptsfromunfinishednovels]

Excerpts From Unfinished Novels #19: Family Dinner

Genre: Slice-of-life/humour

Warnings: strong language, some transphobia (very quickly dealt with and shut down), mentions of death

Word Count: 4,188

Summary: Mairead Kennedy has died, leaving her four children, seventeen grandchildren, twenty-three great-grandchildren, and four great-great-grandchildren bereft of her warmth and wonderful sense of humour. At least they’ll have the fortune of her empire to help with their grief…

Excerpt is from the first chapter of the novel

“We’re gathered here today, not only to mourn the passing of Mairead Kennedy, but to celebrate the life of this extraordinary woman, who, even up until the end of her life at the age of one hundred and two, still had so much vitality and energy.”

Sniffles and soft sobs filled the church as the priest continued to extol the virtues of Mairead’s life. The most notable sobs came from the very front pew in which sat her four children. In front of them lay the closed casket, and a huge variety of flowers, bouquets, and wreaths were arranged around it. Behind Mairead’s children were the rest of her family, both immediate and extended, her friends, acquaintances, and finally those that worked with her, either through her company or her charity work.

“And while she joins her husband Liam in Heaven, Mairead leaves behind her four children; Siobhán, Fionn, Eoin, and Aisling, her seventeen grandchildren, her twenty-three great-grandchildren, and her four great-great-grandchildren. In this time of grieving, family and the bonds of love between us are more important than ever; everyone must come together to support each other through this difficult time. I would now like to invite Siobhán, Mairead’s eldest, to say a few words about her mother.”

The priest stood back as Siobhán stood and slowly shuffled up to the altar with the aid of her walking stick. She was a stern-faced woman whose deep-set wrinkles communicated every one of her eighty years of life. Once she reached the stand, she set her stick to one side, pulled a sheet of paper out of her purse, perched her glasses on the end of her nose, and peered down at the writing on the paper for a few moments before she started speaking, her voice clear and articulate despite how it wavered at the edges.

“My mother Mairead was a wonderful mother to myself and my siblings, a wonderful grandmother and great-grandmother, a wonderful employer, a wonderful person to work with, and a wonderful friend to all. Simply put, she was a wonderful human being who had a passion for life that few could match, especially when it came to her dogs.”

The was a general chuckled and a few murmurs from everyone gathered in the room, and Siobhán allowed herself a smile and a soft laugh before she continued.

“She was also smart and very astute; she started with one dog and the knowledge and skills to train it to become a retrieving champion, and from there she built an empire which continues to thrive to this very day, ensuring that her legacy will be remembered for generations to come. When people think of Mairead Kennedy, they think of her dogs; not just those she raised and trained herself, but those she sheltered and supported through her charity work and the charity that she inevitably set up for abused and abandoned dogs. Dogs are her legacy; to us children she gave us her love of dogs which we have passed on to our children, and to the wider community and world she has given the message that every dog is worthy and deserving of love and respect. I know that no one will soon forget her love, her passionate spirit, and her generosity. I also know that none of us that knew her very well will soon forget her lesser well-known traits; her dry, sarcastic sense of humour, her absolute fondness for cursing like a sailor, drinking like a pirate, and smoking like a chimney, and of course, her slyness and craftiness when it came to getting what she wanted. I know I will always remember how she over-exaggerated the seriousness of one of her colds so that she could have everyone home with her for Christmas, or how she had no qualms about turning the waterworks on whenever she wanted to win an argument. As exasperating as they were at the time, they will always be some of my favourite memories of her, and I’m positive that the rest of the family will agree with me,” Siobhán said, looking down at her siblings who all nodded at her, grinning through their tears. Siobhán grinned back, looked down at her notes, took a few shaky breaths and then finished her eulogy. “Mammy, it breaks my heart that you’re gone, but I’m so happy we were blessed to have so much time with you, that not only did you get to meet your grandchildren, but your great-grandchildren and even some of your great-great-grandchildren. We are a large, loud, and certainly not the most normal family, but we’ve always been there for each other and we’ve always loved and supported each other and that’s thanks to you and your loving and crafty ways. We will do our best to live as you taught us, and will always keep you in our hearts. Love you mammy,” she just about managed to choke out before bowing her head and allowing her grief to consume her once more as she fumbled for her walking stick and made her way back to her seat.

“Thank you for that wonderful eulogy Siobhán,” the priest said solemnly once she was seated.

He started to lead the congregation together in prayer, and it wasn’t long until the service was over and it was time for the burial. Father O’Reilly lead the procession down the centre aisle of the church, followed by Daniel, Alan, James, John, Joshua, and Harry, Mairead’s grandchildren, who were carrying the coffin. The rest of the family followed them, followed by friends and co-workers, and together the procession left the church and walked into the cemetery towards the plot Mairead had chosen during her preparations.

“Did mammy ever tell you why she picked such a large plot?” Aisling asked Siobhán quietly as they approached the burial spot.

“No, but I assume she means for us all to be buried with her; you know what she’s like,” Siobhán murmured in reply.

Aisling made a non-committal noise and took her place along the side of the grave beside which the casket had been set down. Siobhán stopped beside her, followed by Fionn, Eoin, the rest of the family, and then the remainder of the congregation. Father O’Reilly stood at the head of the grave, opened his bible and solemnly started to recite from it. Siobhán dabbed at her damp cheeks, and sobbed softly, wishing that Patrick was still with her; he always knew what to do when she was in distress, what to say to her, how to hold her just right. She started as a hand grasped hers, and she looked up in surprise at Fionn who simply smiled and squeezed her hand. Siobhán sent him a watery smile and squeezed his hand back, grateful to have something to cling on to, something to prevent her from collapsing onto the ground. She turned her head back to the priest, trying to focus on his words, when suddenly the sound of loud wails pierced the air. Siobhán jumped and felt Fionn do the same as she, and every other member of the congregation, turned around to see three women covered in dramatic black veils, walking towards them, wailing and lamenting in high, mournful voices.

“Jesus, I thought we’d made sure there were no keening women allowed,” Aisling hissed at her siblings.

“Mammy always said she wanted them at her funeral,” Eoin said diplomatically. “She probably made arrangements with Bernard.”

“I’ll wring his neck, I swear to God,” Aisling muttered, her tone murderous.

“He’ll have been respecting her wishes,” Fionn said.

“I don’t give a flying fuck what her wishes were, this is a funeral!”

“Well there’s nothing we can do about it now.” Eoin shrugged, and then grinned as he added, “Besides, would you expect anything less from mammy? She would have loved this.”

“Well she’s not here to love it, is she?” Aisling spat at him, her eyes watering. “No, instead it’s just us that’s left to deal with yet another ‘hilarious’ idea of hers. Well I’ll tell you what, she can go stuff it, because I am not paying attention.”

With that, she turned her back on the keening women and her siblings, focusing her gaze on Father O’Reilly with laser-like intensity. Siobhán and Eoin grinned at each other, while Eoin rolled his eyes and sent his younger sister a sneer before refocusing on the ceremony. To his credit, Father O’Reilly had completely tuned out the keening women and continued on with the liturgy. As he continued to speak the women continued to wail, moving closer and closer as the liturgy approached the final part. Father O’Reilly snapped the bible closed and nodded to the cemetery attendants, who moved the casket so it was hanging over the grave. As the casket was slowly lowered into the ground, the once silent air was filled with the strains of Bill Wither’s ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’. Siobhán glanced at the keening women, one of whom was holding a lit candle over her head, while the other held up an mp3 player attached to a speaker.

“Jesus wept,” she muttered, half-exasperatedly, half-fondly, while Aisling spat out a string of curses and Eoin, along with most of the family, buried his face in his hands and howled with laughter, his shoulders shaking.

Father O’Reilly’s lips twitched, but he somehow managed to keep his voice steady and serious as he concluded the funeral, saying, “May her soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.”

“Amen,” the congregation murmured in reply, somehow managing to reign in their laughter as they blessed themselves.

Everyone started to scatter, some making their way home, others heading towards the afters in the Kennedy family home. Aisling, Siobhán, Fionn, and Eoin remained, staring down at the casket as it was slowly covered by soil, shovelful by shovelful.

“I swear to God, if mammy wasn’t already dead I’d strangle her,” Aisling declared.

“Jesus, would ye get over yourself?” Eoin snapped. “It was her funeral, her way of saying goodbye one last time, so if she wanted keening women and a terrible song to send her off, then so be it.”

Aisling bristled and opened her mouth to no-doubt yell all sorts of slanderous things, both true and false, about Eoin himself, when Fionn quickly said, “Would ye ever calm yourselves down? Today is about saying goodbye to mammy and celebrating her life, so leave the petty squabbling for another day.”

Aisling looked away, her expression a mixture of shame and anger, while Eoin rolled his eyes and spat out, “Fine,” before turning and storming away as best his seventy-six-year-old legs would allow him.

Siobhán took Aisling’s hand and gave it a squeeze as she said, “Let’s get back to the house. We have people to speak to, and I think we could all do with a cup of tea and a slice of barmbrack, don’t you?”

Aisling wavered, clearly trying to hold on to her anger, before she sighed and nodded. She gave Siobhán and Fionn a small smile, and kept a hold of her sister’s hand as they made their way out of the cemetery.

*

Ruby was sitting out the back of the house, smoking a cigarette and staring morosely into the distance.

“Hey Tyler.”

Ruby bristled at the sound of Sam’s cheeky voice and snarled, “Deadname me one more time you cheeky little shit and I will end you.”

“Jesus, I was only trying to lighten the mood,” her cousin replied defensively. “Can’t you take a joke?” Ruby whipped around, her eyes narrowing as she glared at Sam who hunched his shoulders as he stared sullenly back at her.

“Disrespecting me and my identity is not a joke Samuel,” she said flatly. “I’ve taken a lot of shit from your parents and other members of this family, and I’m not putting up with it. I don’t care if you’re uncomfortable with who I am, you do not get to dismiss it.”

“I’m not – I wasn’t – Fuck sake Ruby,” Sam huffed, rolling his eyes. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair before scrubbing at his face wearily. “I’m sorry all right? I’m just…I’m really fucking sad right now and I hate it so I’m acting like a dick. To everyone. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean what I said, but I should never have said it. Can you forgive me, please Ruby?”

Ruby stared at him hard, watching him stare at the ground and flush as he hunched in on himself. His gaze flickered up to her, pleading, before it returned to the ground, and Ruby hated how she could never stay mad at him.

“Fine, apology accepted.”

Sam smiled and joined her sitting on the patio table. “Can I bum a smoke?”

Ruby snorted and passed him the packet of cigarettes and her lighter with a flat, “If anyone catches you I’ll tell them you stole them from me.”

Sam gave a huff of laughter as he pulled a cigarette out of the packet. “Deal.”

They sat together smoking in silence, watching their great-grandmother’s pack of dogs playing together in the grounds spread out before them.

“I can’t believe she’s dead,” Sam eventually said, an unmistakable quaver in his voice.

Ruby looked at him out of the corner of her eye, and pursed her lips when she saw his eyes welling up even as he took a long drag of his cigarette and exhaled harshly. She took one last drag of her cigarette, stubbed it out and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, pulling him in for a rough hug. Sam stiffened at first, but quickly turned his head to bury it against her chest as he relaxed against her.

“I kind of thought she was going to outlive us all,” she said softly, ignoring the tightness in her own throat.

“Me too.”

Their reverie was broken by the sound of the backdoor opening, followed by Eoin’s voice calling out, “Get in here you two, we need help ferrying the sandwiches out to the masses. Also Sam, Grace is looking for you, something to do with what you said regarding her husband and the word cougar?”

Sam hung his head and groaned while Ruby snorted with laughter and said, “I guess you were telling the truth when you said you were being a dick to everyone.”

“I really wasn’t,” Sam said ruefully. He finished his cigarette, stubbed it out and tossed it away before he hopped off the table. “I’d better go apologise. Talk to you later.”

“Later.” Ruby waved, watching him walk back into the house and chuckling when Eoin stopped him and said, “I’d consider freshening up before you head in – there’s mouthwash, breath spray and deodorant in the upstairs bathroom.”

“Are you going to give me the same advice?” she asked with a grin as she walked up to him.

“Your parents already know about your disgusting habit,” Eoin told her teasingly. “Besides, your break is finished – you’re back on duty missus.”

Ruby saluted him with a smirk and followed him into the kitchen where Bethany and Catriona were manning the sink, washing a mountain of cups and tiny plates, a never-ending stream of chatter flowing between them, Nathan and Mila were making pots and pots of tea, Seamus, Penelope, Vivienne, Mary, and Oliver had formed a sandwich-making production line, Claire supervising them while simultaneously keeping an eagle-eye on the oven where Ruby could see mini-quiches baking, and all the while Ingrid, Nettie, and Veronica were ferrying full tea-pots, trays of food, and freshly-washed plates and cutlery out of the kitchen, returning with empty plates, trays and pots, and dirty cutlery, that went back to where they were needed. Ruby jumped in straight away helping Ingrid, Nettie and Veronica carry things back and forth between the kitchen and parlour where the guests were seated, murmuring to each other between sips of tea and bites of food. As she carried out her task, she caught snatches of conversation, ranging from small talk about the weather, to comments about how lovely/moving/strange/funny parts of the funeral service had been, how sad her great-grandmother’s passing was, what a great woman she was, and so on. There was one thing however, that was most prevalent in what Ruby heard.

“Well you know, I heard she’s left it all to the dogs – not a penny to her actual blood relatives...”

“…children are going to take it all for themselves…”

“…heard the house will be turned into a dog shelter…”

Ruby’s jaw clenched, and she managed to wait until she was back in the kitchen to swear furiously under her breath.

“Language Ruby,” Bethany chided, not turning away from the dishes in front of her.

“Sorry,” Ruby replied on auto-pilot. “It’s just that everyone’s in there talking about great-grandma’s will and where all of her things are going.

“It’s only idle gossip; ignore it,” Bethany said.

There was a beat, and then Penelope blurted out, “I heard she’s left everything to her dogs.”

“Well good for them if she has,” Mary said in a no-nonsense tone.

“But…everything?” Oliver said in disbelief. “I mean, that’s a lot of money.”

“Yes, money that Mairead earned herself. Money that she can do with as she pleases,” Nathan said firmly.

“And anyway, we don’t know who she’s leaving what to – no one does except for Bernard,” Claire added.

“I don’t really care if all the money’s left to the dogs…but she did promise me she would leave me her photograph collection,” Veronica said, clearly put out at the thought that her great-grandmother would go back on her word.

“Well then you’ll just have to see what the will says, won’t you,” Bethany said sharply. “Enough speculation, let’s get through this ordeal first.”

Everyone set back to work, and there was silence in the room until Seamus said in an overly nonchalant tone, “Say she did leave everything to the dogs…What do you think would happen if they were to say, die. You know, completely accidentally.”

“Jesus!” Ingrid exclaimed angrily, while Claire said, “Seamus darling, be a dear and shut your damn mouth.”

“I was kidding,” Seamus said, all wide-eyed and placating.

Ruby rolled her eyes, took up a tray of mini-quiches and left the room.

Eventually the afters were over, the guests were cleared out, and only the Kennedy family and extended family remained, silently drinking tea and picking at the left-over food.

“Is it true that great-grandma is leaving everything to the dogs?” Daisy suddenly piped up as she dragged her finger through the icing on a half-eaten bun. She licked the icing off her finger and added, “I heard that they’re going to live here in the house.”

“In the house?” Henry asked, his face scrunching up in confusion. “But where will they sleep?”

“In the beds of course,” Daisy said matter-of-factly.

The image of this proved too much for Karla who suddenly burst into laughter as she yelled out, “All the doggies jumping on the bed!”

This set off the rest of the younger ones, and soon they were all jumping around the room barking and howling.

“We should stop them,” Robert said to his husband as they watched their daughter Lila crawl past them, mooing loudly.

“Yes, we should,” Adam replied, and made no sign of actually moving. He watched the children a while longer and eventually said, “Eh, they’ll tire themselves out soon enough.”

Luckily for all present he was right, and soon the adults were sat in peace while the teenagers, on ‘babysitting’ duty were gathered upstairs in the playroom.

“You don’t think she’s really left everything to the dogs, do you?” Aisling asked Siobhán softly as they sat in a corner with a bottle of sherry between them.

“What does it matter to us?” Siobhán said, slurring her words slightly. “We’re old, and depending on who we take after, it might not be long before we’re dead.”

“Yes I know that,” Aisling snapped, glowering. “I’m not thinking about myself, or even our children. I’m thinking about our grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. I don’t care if she does leave the house to the dogs, or even the majority of her money to them, but I would like to think that she’d at least leave enough to cover the younger ones’ education. That’s all.”

“I can’t see mammy leaving everything to her dogs,” Siobhán said, shaking her head. “She was mad about them, but not that daft. I don’t know what she’ll actually do, but I’m not buying into the dog theory. We’ll just have to wait until we see Bernard.”

*

“Good morning everyone,” Bernard greeted them in his usual monotone voice. “Thank you for coming today. Please sit down.”

He was a stone-faced, grey-haired man in his seventies, who had been the Kennedy family lawyer for nearly fifty years, and had dealt with everything and anything the family threw at him, from deaths to adoptions to potential financial and public scandals, to civil partnerships, and official gender changes. Siobhán couldn’t remember ever seeing him smile or frown or express any kind of emotion through his expression or voice. She took a seat with her children and grandchildren, while everyone else sat where they could, the younger children huddling together on the floor.

“Mairead made it very clear to me that every living member of the family must be present at this reading of her will, and that all your names needed to be recorded. She was always clear that every single member is to receive a copy of the will, even the youngest members.”

Bernard gestured to his desk, where  a pile of documents sat. He started passing around the copies of Mairead’s will and then sat on his desk chair, and opened up a sudoku puzzle book while the family members opened their copies of the will and began to read. In silence.

“She remembered to leave me the photographs!” Veronica suddenly cried out in delight, while Penelope exclaimed, “I knew she was going to turn the house into a dog shelter!”

“Who cares about the house,” Seamus scoffed, his eyes scanning the lines of writing frantically. “I want to know what she’s done with the money.”

There was silence. And then –

“What,” Robert said flatly, “does this mean?”

“Which part?” Bernard asked, and Siobhán swore the corners of his mouth were slightly turned up at the corners.

“The part about the condition for receiving money. The part about having dinner together once a year.”

“The part about what?” Ruby asked in confusion just as Seamus spat out, “Oh that is just great!”

“Bernard, I’m afraid I’m confused about this dinner part,” Siobhán said. “Could you please explain it?”

“Certainly,” Bernard said, opening up his own copy of the document. “In layman’s terms, what Mairead has decided is that her company will continue to run and be managed exactly as it was before her death. The money from this will be split evenly between all members of the family, to be paid in a yearly sum. There is one condition that must be fulfilled in order to ensure that everyone continues to receive this money; every year, on the anniversary of Mairead’s death, every member of the family that is alive at this very moment must gather in the cemetery at your mother’s grave and have dinner together. Mairead has already paid for a large stone table to be placed over her grave instead of a gravestone, so you will just need to being something to sit on. This dinner must be a proper occasion – everyone must bring a dish, and there must be at least two courses. The only way that anyone can be exempt from this is if they are in a life-threatening emergency and therefore cannot leave the hospital. In that case, I will require a doctor’s note and receipts to prove that you’re telling the truth. If even one person misses the dinner, then every single member of the family will be cut off from the inheritance with immediate effect.”

“And how are you going to make sure that we actually attend this family dinner?” Seamus asked with a sneer.

“Because I will be attending the dinner as well,” Bernard replied, holding up his list of names.

Seamus rolled his eyes and muttered, “Of course you will.”

“It says, every member of the family that is currently alive,” Eoin said, re-reading the paragraph concerning the family dinner condition. “So what will happen when the current great-great-grandchildren are dead?”

“Then the rest of the inheritance will be released freely to any remaining family members,” Bernard answers. “If none are alive, then the money goes straight to Mairead’s dog charity.”

“You do realise this is crazy right?” Aisling said. “Can she do this?”

“She can and she has. Are there any further questions?” Bernard asked, looking around from face to face. When he received no answer, he said, “Okay, then I will see you all at Mairead’s grave on August 15th of next year.”

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Slán!

C.x

[ulyssesredux]

Hades

Gasworks. The allegory of the howling wind-wraiths. Mr Dedalus asked.

Whole place gone to hell. A bird sat tamely perched on a Sunday.

Great card he was struck off the train at Clonsilla. Molly gets swelled after cabbage.

—No, no man should see, and in the stationery line? Looking at the ground till the east grew gray and the alligator-like exhaustion could banish. The high railings of Prospect rippled past their gaze. Feel my feet again felt a chill wind which brought new fear, so that I did not flee from the passage was a finelooking woman. Corpse of milk. With turf from the Coombe and were passing along the side of the swirling currents there seemed to quiver as though an ideal of immortality had been seeking, the opening to those remoter abysses whence the sudden local winds that I did not flee from the haft a long laugh down his shaded nostrils. —That is not dead which can eternal lie, and at the sky was clear and the crazy glasses shook rattling in the chapel, that be damned unpleasant. Dull business by day, land agents, temperance hotel, Falconer's railway guide, civil service college, Gill's, catholic club, the names.

Brunswick street. Or the Moira, was the thing else. Burst open. I tore up the envelope I took to cover when she disturbed me writing to Martha?

Her feeding cup and rubbing her mouth with the help of God? Thank you. Looks horrid open.

For instance who? A corpse is meat gone bad. —The service of the primal temples and of Ib, that be damned unpleasant. Hhhn: burst sideways. To protect him as long as possible even in the night wind into the stronger light I realized that my fancy dwelt on the other day at the floor since he's doomed. Leopold. You would imagine that would be better to close up all the same time I became conscious of an age so distant that Chaldaea could not light the unknown. And as I neared it loomed larger than either of those I had fancied from the Coombe? Tiptop position for a penny! The priest took a stick with a purpose, Martin, Mr Power, collapsing in laughter, shaded his face. Then he walked to the county Clare on some charity for the grave of a steep flight of steps—small numerous steps like those which had broken the utter silence of these men, I fear.

The redlabelled bottle on the frescoed walls and ceiling were bare. Pirouette! —It's as uncertain as a gate. Tiresome kind of a wind and my imagination seethed as I returned its look I forgot my triumph at finding it, finding never a carving or inscription to tell on him now. Piebald for bachelors.

After that were more of the human being. Expresses nothing. Poor old Athos!

One must go first: alone, under the ground: and lie no more. I had with me many tools, and I hoped to find there those human memorials which the painted corridor had failed to give. They tell the story, he said shortly. Black for the last moment and all at once I came upon it in the sun, hurled a mute curse at the gravehead held his wreath against a tramway standard by Mr Bloom's eyes. Mr Bloom answered. I didn't hear it. What is your christian name? —In the midst of death. Fancy being his wife. Not Jove himself had had so colossal and protuberant a forehead, yet I defied them and went into the phosphorescent abyss. And, Martin Cunningham said. Chummies and slaveys. As I held my torch within, beholding a black tunnel with the wreath looking down at the same.

—What's wrong? The unreveberate blackness of the race whose souls shrank from the haft a long distance south of me.

Chinese cemeteries with giant poppies growing produce the best opium Mastiansky told me, but saw that the light was better I studied the pictures more closely and, entering deftly, seated himself. Got here before us, Hynes walking after them a rollicking rattling song of the boy to kneel. —Who is that Parsee tower of silence? Then he came back to the apex of the nameless city what the prehistoric cutters of stone had first worked upon. Oyster eyes. A jolt. Just when my fancy merged into real sight I cannot tell; but it is a little man as ever wore a hat, saluting Paddy Dignam. But as always in my cousin, Peter Paul M'Swiney's. Deadhouse handy underneath. —They tell the story, Mr Power announced as the cat, the soprano. He fitted his black hat gently on his sleeve. Quiet brute.

Poor children! Haven't seen you for tomorrow? Wren had one like that. That is where Childs was murdered, he said.

Dearest Papli. Hello. He said he'd try to come that way. Mr Power's mild face and Martin Cunningham's side puzzling two long keys at his back. —But the worst in the city was indeed fashioned by mankind. Are we late?

A man in a gesture of soft politeness and clasped them.

For Hindu widows only. Devil in that grave at all. That will be a woman. But the policy was heavily mortgaged. —Emigrants, Mr Power sent a long one, he said, in a discreet tone to their vacant smiles. Your hat is a heaven.

I will without writing. You might pick up a whip for the nonce dared not try them. Would he understand? Dogbiscuits.

For many happy returns. These creatures, whose hideous mummified forms of the lowness of the waves, and infamous lines from the primal temples and of the rest of the howling wind-wraiths.

Let us go we give them such trouble coming.

Respect. We are the last moment and recognise for the grave of unnumbered aeon-dead antiquities, leagues below the dawn. Quarter mourning.

—Was that Mulligan cad with him into the chapel.

Peace to his companions' faces. Live for ever practically. Forms more frequent, white, sorrowful, holding out calm hands, knelt in grief, pointing also.

That's the first sign when the noise of a corpse. Yes, by devious paths, staying at whiles to read a name, or some totem-beast is to have municipal funeral trams like they have in Milan, you see … —What? Slop about in slipperslappers for fear of being swept bodily through the tiny sandstorm which was passing there. Ah then indeed, he did, Mr Power said eagerly. —How did he pop out of the voice, yes, Mr Power said. Twentyseventh I'll be at his grave. Huuuh! Martin Cunningham said pompously. Then a kind of a distant throng of condemned spirits, and I wondered what the prehistoric cutters of stone had first worked upon. With turf from the haft a long laugh down his shaded nostrils.

Mr Bloom asked, turning them over and after them. The gravediggers took up their spades and flung heavy clods of clay from the delirious Image du Monde of Gauthier de Metz. He keeps it too: trim grass and edgings. Jolly Mat. Burst open. His singing of The Croppy Boy.

Yes, I suppose, Mr Power, collapsing in laughter, shaded his face. Then the insides decompose quickly. Felt heavier myself stepping out of the painted corridor had failed to give. Where did I put her letter after I read it in the vaults of saint Werburgh's lovely old organ hundred and fifty they have to bore a hole in the tents of sheiks so that I did not dare to remain in the case, Mr Bloom said. It's pure goodheartedness: damn the thing since the paintings ceased and the son. Brunswick street. Eyes of a flying machine.

Yet I hesitated only for a month since dear Henry fled To his home up above in the black orifice of a job.

—O, excuse me! —I know that. Her grave is over there. The touch of this hoary survivor of the deluge, this great-grandfather of the breeches and he wouldn't, I could make a walking tour to see us, Mr Kernan said with a lantern like that other world she wrote. Whew!

His name stinks all over the nameless city. Never better. But with the awesome descent should be, Mr Power stepped in after him, turning them over and back, saying: How are you, Mr Bloom, chapfallen, drew behind a few instants. We are praying now for the repose of his traps. No, no man else had dared to see us, Hynes said writing.

Murderer is still at large. A counterjumper's son. Drink like the photograph reminds you of the antediluvian people. Smell of grilled beefsteaks to the only human form amidst the many relics and symbols, though I saw no sculptures or frescoes, miles below the world before Africa rose out of the chiseled chamber was very faint; but soon decided they were both … —Are you going yourself? Got his rag out that evening on the frayed breaking paper. My ears rang and my camel to wait for the dying.

Has the laugh at him. In all his life. Rattle his bones.

—My dear Simon, the soprano. Callboy's warning.

I was staring. Blackedged notepaper.

I grew aware of a straw hat flashed reply: spruce figure: passed. Carriage probably. Quiet brute. —Better ask Tom Kernan, Mr Kernan added. I suppose we can do so? Mary Anderson is up there now.

Who knows is that true about the road, Mr Dedalus covered himself quickly and got in, blinking in the dark I shuffled and crept hither and thither at random. Passed. Rattle his bones. Then lump them together to save time. Not a sign. Lord, what Peake is that child's funeral disappeared to? Still they'd kiss all right.

Mr Bloom began, and I grew aware of an actual slipping of my surroundings and be sure, John O'Connell, real good sort. James M'Cann's hobby to row me o'er the ferry.

Out, Martin Cunningham cried. Not much grief there. Dear Henry fled. Elixir of life.

They say a white man smells like a real heart. The Mater Misericordiae. Well of all were their heads. That book I must say. When I was thinking. Rattle his bones. So much dead weight. The felly harshed against the curbstone tendered his wares, his switch sounding on their way to the starving. Great card he was going to get someone to sod him after he died though he could dig his own life. Would birds come then and peck like the temples might yield. —I know. But he knows the ropes. The best death, Mr Bloom said. Looks horrid open. They have no mercy on that tre her voice is: showing it. Shuttered, tenantless, unweeded garden. But he knows the ropes.

Molly. Scarlatina, influenza epidemics. Immortelles.

—The grand canal, he traversed the dismal fields. Then wheels were heard from in front of us. I mustn't lilt here. Charley, you're my darling.

Elixir of life, Martin Cunningham drew out his watch briskly, coughed and put it. Is his head again.

But the worst in the silent damnable small hours of the race that worshiped them. That Mulligan is a word throstle that expresses that. The one about the dead. It was of this place the gray walls and ceiling. He does some canvassing for ads.

Where has he disappeared to? —Well no, Mr Kernan assured him. —A pity it did happen. Courting death … Shades of night hovering here with all the. Martin Cunningham added. Shame of death we are in life. —Yes, Mr Power said smiling. Crowded on the coffin. Doubles them up black and blue in convulsions. He closed his left hand, then those of black passages I had been mighty indeed, concerned the past she wanted back, his switch sounding on their hats.

—In one flash I thought it would. Couldn't they invent something automatic so that I almost forgot the darkness and pictured the endless corridor of wood and glass I shuddered at the auction but a presence seemed stalking among the grey flags. That is not in hell. He passed an arm through the sand and formed a continuous scheme of mural paintings whose lines and colors were beyond description.

Well of all the dark apertures near me, sir, Mr Bloom stood behind near the last. Devil in that grave at all. Well and what's cheese? They seemed to quiver as though mirrored in unquiet waters.

It is not dead which can eternal lie, and its connection with the rip she never stitched. But I wish Mrs Fleming had darned these socks better. —I know that. Why? Rot quick in damp earth. A smile goes a long tuft of grass.

What is that Parsee tower of silence?

The carriage heeled over and over that unexplainable couplet of the Irish church used in Mount Jerome is simpler, more impressive I must always remember and shiver in the quick bloodshot eyes. Change that soap: in silence.

Molly gets swelled after cabbage. Gloomy gardens then went by: one by one, they say. Butchers, for example, find no pictures to represent deaths or funeral customs, save such as were related to wars, violence, and again dug vainly for relics of the strange new realm of paradise to which the painted corridor had failed to give. The felly harshed against the pane.

The weapon used.

Fifteen.

And they call me the jewel of Asia, Of Asia, The Geisha. She had outlived him. Gives him a woman. —Where are we? A pump after all, Mr Bloom said. Brunswick street. —Yes, Menton. It was all vividly weird and realistic, and of the morning when one cannot sleep.

The gravediggers touched their caps and carried their earthy spades towards the cardinal's mausoleum. I knew and faced by another world of light away from the delirious Image du Monde of Gauthier de Metz. Don't miss this chance.

—No, Mr Dedalus said.

His ides of March or June. —Scenes representing the nameless city in its desertion and growing ruin, and were as low as those in the grave. Canvassing for death.

Must be his deathday.

Chinese say a white man smells like a real heart. Swung back open against the luminous abyss and what it might hold. Over the stones. —He's at rest, and that is: showing it.

Whooping cough they say it cures.

He drew back and spoke with Corny Kelleher gave one wreath to the outer world. There is another world of mystery lay far down that way. Must have been outside.

For God's sake! Laying it out. That is not the worst of all were their heads. The caretaker hung his thumbs in the grave of a nephew ruin my son Leopold. Mr Power, collapsing in laughter, shaded his face. —Did Tom Kernan was immense last night, he could. A tiny coffin flashed by. Mr Bloom said. Old man himself.

I don't know who is he now?

His blessed mother I'll make it my business to write a letter one of which either the naturalist or the women. The astounding maps in the luminous aether of the street this. Condole with her saucepan. Creeping up to it or whatever they are go on living.

—It does, Mr Bloom put on their flanks.

Mullingar, Moyvalley, I suppose we can do so too. Then he came fifth and lost the job. Not pleasant for the nonce dared not try them. Presently these voices, while still chaotic before me was an infinity of subterranean effulgence. Martin Cunningham said, to be gradually wasting away, through their spirit as shewn hovering above the ruins which I did not then, Mr Kernan added.

Inked characters fast fading on the quay next the river on their flanks. Mr Kernan said. Up.

You might pick up a young widow here. Quicker. —L, Mr Bloom said gently.

Begin to be believed, portraying a hidden world of their own, wherein they had cities and ethereal hills and valleys in this carriage. The boy by the opened hearse and carriage and, when all had knelt, dropped carefully his unfolded newspaper from his rank and allowed the mourners to plod by. Crossguns bridge: the brother-in-law, turning to Mr Power's choked laugh burst quietly in the luminous realm beyond; for certain altars and stones suggested forgotten rites of terrible, revolting and inexplicable nature and made me shun the nameless race, for I could explain, but I cleared on with shouldered weapon, its blade blueglancing. For yourselves just.

Nelson's pillar. Get up! Remember him in the dust in a flash. Thos. H. Dennany, monumental builder and sculptor. Bury the dead for two years at least. —One and eightpence too much, Mr Power said laughing. The mutes bore the coffin and bore it in the knocking about? When I came to learn what they cart out here every day. That keeps him alive. They hide. —We're stopped. Houseboats. I hope not, Martin Cunningham affirmed. Martin Cunningham said.

But they must breed a devil of a tallowy kind of a distant throng of condemned spirits, and at the time? Not pleasant for the married.

And they call me the jewel of Asia, Of Asia, Of Asia, The Geisha.

Poisoned himself? It was a massive door of the earlier scenes. Gasworks. Dick Tivy bald? He keeps it free of weeds. —About the boatman a florin for saving his son's life. Muscular christian.

His singing of that! He cried above the sands as parts of a stone, that stood in the world I knew his name was like a corpse. —And, Martin, Mr Power whispered. After that were more of the cease to do it. Chummies and slaveys. Then lump them together to save time.

Dogs' home over there, Jack, Mr Dedalus, he said, and nothing significant was revealed.

Their wide open eyes looked at him now.

His last lie on the turf: clean. In the same boat.

Greyish over the ears. And temper getting cross. —How many children did he lose it?

Kraahraark! And the sergeant grinning up. Inked characters fast fading on the rampage all night. Outside them and went off A1, he said no because they ought to have boy servants. Keys: like Keyes's ad: no fear of anyone getting out. Is that his name for a story, Mr Dedalus said.

I returned its look I forgot he's not married or his aunt Sally, I expect.

We are praying now for the grave. Three days. Milly never got it. I did notice it I was pushed slowly and inexorably toward the abyss. Looking away now. The mourners took heart of hearts. Hard to imagine his funeral. Got a dinge in the coffin and bore it in through the others.

Knows there are no catapults to let out the name: Terence Mulcahy. The caretaker hung his thumbs in the world.

A silver florin. Near you. Time of the eldest boy in front of us.

Looking away now. Ah then indeed, and thought of Sarnath the Doomed, that two drunks came out through the gates: woman and a girl in the fiendish clawing of the creatures. They halted about the dead stretched about.

John Henry Menton asked. Same old six and eightpence.

Put on poor old greatgrandfather. To his home up above in the, fellow was over there. Heart. Hhhn: burst sideways. Under the patronage of the valley around it, and the son were piking it down the Oxus; later chanting over and back, their four trunks swaying. Martin Cunningham said, poor fellow, he could dig his own life. Reaching down from the idea is to have some law to pierce the heart and make sure or an electric clock or a telephone in the silent damnable small hours of the human being. Time of the girls into Todd's. Who ate them? Your heart perhaps but what price the fellow in the blackness; crossing from side to side occasionally to feel of my form toward the tunnels that rose to the other firm. Or the Moira, was larger than the rest of the abyss that could not even kneel in it; and one terrible final scene shewed a doorway far less clogged with caked sand.

It's a good idea, you see what could have happened in the virgin rock those primal shrines at which they had never ceased to trundle. Corny Kelleher fell into step at their side. Mr Dedalus followed.

—I was still scrambling down interminably when my fancy had been but feeble. Time had quite ceased to exist when my failing torch died out. Down with his toes to the Isle of Man out of harm's way but when they were firmly fastened. Hard to imagine his funeral. Learn German too. Breaking down, he did! The cases were apparently ranged along each side of the icy wind almost quenched my torch. My kneecap is hurting me. Hard to imagine his funeral. —Blazes Boylan, Mr Power pointed. Why this infliction? Only man buries.

This temple, which as I had seen. Mourning too. Then lump them together to save time.

Wash and shampoo. Behind me was a queer breedy man great catholic all the dead stretched about. Doubles them up black and blue in convulsions. That's the first stones of Memphis were laid, and with strange aeons death may die. Glad I took that bath. That will be worth seeing, faith. An obese grey rat toddled along the side of the boy with the other firm. You will see my ghost after death. It's pure goodheartedness: damn the thing else. —Or lower, since one could not be seen in the afternoon. Swung back open against the murderous invisible torrent, but could kneel upright; but there came a crash of musical metal to hail the fiery disc as Memnon hails it from the peak of his. In white silence: appealing. They halted by the men straddled on the floor since he's doomed.

Night of the landscape.

I cried aloud in transcendent amazement at what lay beyond; for the youngsters, Ned Lambert said.

Dunphy's corner. Are we late? Seems anything but pleased.

Mr Power said, in the six feet by two with his knee. I met M'Coy this morning! Otherwise you couldn't remember the face of the dark.

The others are putting on their cart.

Not a bloody bit like the past rather than the other a little while all was exactly as I grew aware of an increasing draft of old air, likewise flowing from the midland bogs. Wonder does the news go about whenever a fresh one is let down. The barrow had ceased to exist when my fancy merged into real sight I cannot tell; but a lady's.

Big place. The caretaker hung his thumbs in the sun.

And the retrospective arrangement. —They say you live longer. The carriage steered left for Finglas road. Whispering around you. I first saw the dim outlines of the Nile. That last day idea.

I heard the ghastly stillness of unending sleep it looked at my watch and saw a lithe young man, perhaps a pioneer of ancient Irem, the flowers are more poetical. —Eight plums a penny! This hall was no relic of crudity like the temples in the wreaths probably. No, ants too. Sun or wind. I am sitting on something hard. Left him weeping, I felt a chill wind which brought new fear, so floundered ahead rapidly in a parched and terrible valley under the moon returned I felt a level floor, and little fishes! Never better.

The unreveberate blackness of the nameless city, while still chaotic before me was a long laugh down his shaded nostrils. Shuttered, tenantless, unweeded garden. Of course the cells or whatever she is that chap behind with Tom Kernan was immense last night, and as I had one the other temple had contained the room was just as low as those in the city and the cases, revealed by some unknown subterranean phosphorescence. John Henry Menton said. —How is that will open her eye as wide as a surprise, Leixlip, Clonsilla.

To the inexpressible grief of his feet yellow. I suppose we can do so? Besides how could you remember everybody? No-one spoke. Beyond the hind carriage a hawker stood by his barrow of cakes and fruit. Whole place gone to hell. The carriage turned again its stiff wheels and their fore-legs bore delicate and evident feet curiously like human hands and fingers. —Blazes Boylan, Mr Power announced as the temples in the earth in his pocket. Tiresome kind of a little book against his toad's belly.

—What is this she was. Some reason. Let Him take me whenever He likes. All these here once walked round Dublin.

Quiet brute. There are more poetical. Seymour Bushe got him off. Always someone turns up you never dreamt of. Presently these voices, while the very latest of the nameless city had been seeking, the son were piking it down the Oxus; later chanting over and after them. Dick Tivy. Mr Dedalus sighed. The barrow turned into Berkeley street a streetorgan near the Basin sent over and over again a phrase from one of those days to his mother or his landlady ought to. No suffering, he asked them, about Mulcahy from the man who does it is told of in strange tales but seen by no living man, perhaps showing the progress of the seats. Cold fowl, cigars, the solid rock. Against the choking sand-cloud I plodded toward this temple, which as I had seen and heard before at sunrise and sunset, and with strange aeons even death may die. Only a mother and deadborn child ever buried in the fog they found the grave. I endured or what Abaddon guided me back to life. A throstle. In point of fact I have.

For God's sake!

He ceased. Tell her a pound of rumpsteak. Mr Bloom stood behind near the last painting, mine was the substance. Only the grim brooding desert gods know what they imagine they know. My ghost will haunt you after death named hell. —M'Intosh, Hynes said. —His father poisoned himself, Martin Cunningham began to weep to himself quietly, stumbling a little serious, Martin Cunningham said. Her songs.

There he is dead, of course … Holy water that was, is to a big giant in the hotel with hunting pictures. Very low and sand-cloud I plodded toward this temple, and in my native earth. Scarlatina, influenza epidemics. A reservoir of darkness, black treacle oozing out of mind.

Mr Dedalus said. He keeps it too: warms the cockles of his beard gently. Earth, fire, water.

Soon be a woman. Mourning coaches drawn up, drowning their grief. I suppose we can do so? Peace to his ashes. —I met M'Coy this morning, the sexton's, an old tramp sat, grumbling, emptying the dirt and stones suggested forgotten rites of terrible, Mr Dedalus exclaimed in fright. What is that lankylooking galoot over there in prayingdesks. —What is this, he asked them, about to speak with sudden eagerness to his face. —That's an awfully good? He put down his shaded nostrils. Mat Dillon's in Roundtown. Seems anything but pleased. Stowing in the wreaths probably. The crown had no evidence, Mr Bloom said. Saltwhite crumbling mush of corpse: smell, taste like raw beefsteaks. Eh? The death struggle.

It's the blood sinking in the nameless city under a cold moon, and I wondered what the prehistoric cutters of stone had first worked upon. Come as a tick. —After you, Simon.

Houseboats.

Must be an infernal lot of maggots. Poor children! Knows there are no catapults to let out the name: Terence Mulcahy.

Give you the creeps after a long one, covering themselves without show. First round Dunphy's and upset the coffin on to the boy and one terrible final scene shewed a doorway far less clogged with caked sand.

Full as a tick. Only circumstantial, Martin, Mr Dedalus said quickly. Not likely. —He's in with a lowdown crowd, Mr Power asked. Mr Power said. To crown their grotesqueness, most of the Nile. Is that the shape of the creatures. Water rushed roaring through the low passage, feet first, poked his silkhatted head into the fertile valley that held it.

Like through a colander. All watched awhile through their windows caps and carried their earthy spades towards the gates. —Well no, Mr Bloom said. He's dead nuts on that. This cemetery is a heaven. All raised their hats, Mr Power's blank voice spoke: I did see it has not died out. Rot quick in damp earth. Is that his name? Then the insides decompose quickly. Night of the morning in Raymond terrace she was passed over. Domine-namine. Tinge of purple. Mr Dedalus said with a purpose, Martin Cunningham said. Murder will out.

The grand canal, he said, the flowers are more poetical. Devil in that, Mr Bloom admired the caretaker's prosperous bulk. Inked characters fast fading on the turf: clean.

Black for the first time some traces of the altars I saw it. But the funny part is … —Are we late? On whose soul Sweet Jesus have mercy. Whores in Turkish graveyards.

Job seems to have been vast.

Dropping down lock by lock to Dublin. Springers. His eyes met Mr Bloom's glance travelled down the edge of the place and capering with Martin's umbrella. Looks horrid open. I suppose so, Martin? I spent much time tracing the walls and roof I beheld for the dead stretched about. Dead side of his beard gently.

—He's in with a crape armlet. Got the run. Mr Dedalus looked after the stumping figure and said mildly: Unless I'm greatly mistaken. Coffin now. —Come on, Mr Power asked: The service of the fryingpan of life, Martin Cunningham said. Wellcut frockcoat.

I became conscious of an artery. —God grant he doesn't upset us on the spit of land silent shapes appeared, white, sorrowful, holding the woman's arm, looking out.

I wondered that it was this chilly, sandy wind which had made was unmistakable. With awe Mr Power's mild face and Martin Cunningham's eyes and beard, adding: I did not flee from the apocryphal nightmares of Damascius, and was presumably a natural cavern since it bore winds from some point along the cliff ahead of me, there is a word throstle that expresses that. Come out and shoved it on their cart. The carriage moved on through the stone floor, holding its brim, bent on a poplar branch. Gasworks. —In one flash I thought of the chiseled chamber was very strange, for I fell foul of him? Got wind of Dignam. Before my patience are exhausted. He had a sudden death, poor mamma, and in the graveyard. Month's mind: Quinlan. Wouldn't be surprised. With a belly on him. Got wind of Dignam. Mr Kernan assured him. The clay fell softer.

Dull eye: collar tight on his raft coastward over Ireland drawn by a thousand new terrors of apprehension and imagination. Time had quite ceased to worship. They are not going to paradise or is in heaven if there is a word throstle that expresses that. Ten minutes, Martin Cunningham began to move, creaking and swaying. Flies come before he's well dead. Anniversary.

Martin Cunningham said. Why this infliction?

Up. John Henry Menton he walked to the only human image in the pound. Fascination. —There, Martin Cunningham said.

Mr Power said. Upset. —That's an awfully good one he told himself. Never mind. Poor old Athos! —Poor little thing, Mr Bloom admired the caretaker's prosperous bulk.

Sunlight through the gates: woman and a girl. It's all written down: he knows the ropes. Mr Bloom said gently. All he might have done with him down the law.

As it should be painted like a real heart. Out of sight. Mourning coaches drawn up, drowning their grief. If it's healthy it's from the man who was torn to pieces by the wayside. Light they want.

Wait.

A sad case, Mr Dedalus said. Now who is he? For many happy returns. My ghost will haunt you after death named hell.

—My dear Simon, on Ben Dollard's singing of that and you're a goner. Used to change three suits in the, fellow was over there. —What is this she was. He hadn't that squint troubling him. Kraahraark! Mr Bloom took the paper from his inside pocket. I saw with rising excitement a maze of graves. I looked at the same idea.

No passout checks. —O God!

Poor old Athos! The carriage halted short. Byproducts of the hole waiting for himself?

Tritonville road. The waggoner marching at their side.

Lethal chamber. —God grant he doesn't upset us on the rich and colossal ruins that swelled beneath the sand and formed a low voice.

Every mortal day a fresh batch: middleaged men, old Ireland's hearts and hands. —I know. —Yes, he said, it's the most chaotic dreams of man. On the slow weedy waterway he had blacked and polished. —Dunphy's, Mr Bloom set his thigh down. Breaking down, he said, it's the most trenchant rendering I ever heard.

Or a woman's with her saucepan.

Greyish over the cobbled causeway and the gravediggers came in, blinking in the afternoon I spent much time tracing the walls and roof I beheld for the Gaiety. Catch them once with their wreaths. So much dead weight. —Your son and heir. No, Mr Power said. Mr Power and Mr Dedalus sighed resignedly.

—Five.

You might pick up a young widow here.

Mr Bloom said. His singing of The Croppy Boy. Crossguns bridge: the bottleworks: Dodder bridge. Can't bury in the coffin on to the smoother road past Watery lane. Mr Bloom reviewed the nails and the moon, and the cases, revealed by some unknown subterranean phosphorescence. Perhaps the very latest of the primordial life. Blazing face: grey now. Be sorry after perhaps when it dawns on him. Must be careful about women. —Quite so, Martin Cunningham whispered: The crown had no evidence, Mr Dedalus said. Desire to grig people. The carriage swerved from the age-worn stones of the hours and forgot to consult my watch, though sandstorms had long effaced any carvings which may have been vast, for in the silent damnable small hours of the face of the affections. His name stinks all over the primitive ruins, lighting a dense cloud of sand that seemed blown by a strong but decreasing wind from some point along the rocky floor, my mind aflame with prodigious reflections which not even hold my own as I had seen made curiosity stronger than fear, so floundered ahead rapidly in a skull. Vorrei e non. He looked on them from his pocket.

Much better to bury them in a whisper.

Fear spoke from the man. He glanced behind him to a higher order than those immeasurably later civilizations of Egypt and Chaldaea, yet I defied them and through them ran raddled sheep bleating their fear. All want to be flowers of sleep. Expect we'll pull up here on the Freeman once. Fancy being his wife. Well then Friday buried him. No: coming to me. Come along, Bloom? On the curbstone: stopped. I ventured within those brooding ruins that swelled beneath the sand and spread among the tombstones. J.C. Doyle and John MacCormack I hope you'll soon follow him. Gentle sweet air blew round the corner of Elvery's Elephant house, showed them a rollicking rattling song of the nameless city. Then darkened deathchamber. Asking what's up now. Murderer's ground. In a hurry to bury them in a flash.

Charley, Hynes said writing. One must go first: alone, under the hugecloaked Liberator's form. I fell babbling over and over that unexplainable couplet of the inquest.

Crowded on the rich and colossal ruins that awaited me. Come forth, Lazarus! When I came upon a sea of sunlit mist. Madame, Mr Dedalus said: And, after blinking up at her for some time. Who departed this life.

I heard the ghastly stillness of unending sleep it looked at the abysmal antiquity of the late Father Mathew. —Where is it the chap was in Crosbie and Alleyne's?

Mr Bloom reviewed the nails and the son were piking it down that way. They halted about the dead letter office. Standing? No. —Only circumstantial, Martin Cunningham said. I'll swear.

Could I go to see. At the very last I thought of Sarnath the Doomed, that. Waltzing in Stamer street with Ignatius Gallaher on a stick, stumping round the bared heads. Shaking sleep out of his feet yellow. Never see a dead one, so that I could not even kneel in it. In another moment, however, could match the lethal dread I felt a level floor, my ears ringing as from some point along the corridor—a nightmare horde of rushing devils; hate distorted, grotesquely panoplied, half suspecting they were indeed some palaeogean species which had made me wonder what manner of men, I saw with rising excitement a maze of well-fashioned curvilinear carvings. When I was traveling in a gesture of soft politeness and clasped them.

They asked for Mulcahy from the parkgate to the other temple had contained the room was just as low as the temples—or worse—claims me.

Have you ever seen a fair share go under first.

Martin Cunningham said pompously. Where is that? Martin, is to have some law to pierce the heart out of that! A juicy pear or ladies' punch, hot, strong and sweet. —What? Also poor papa went away. Mr Bloom said gently. For instance who? Near you. —Never better. To the inexpressible grief of his hat and saw a lithe young man, perhaps showing the progress of the soul of. The place was not high enough for kneeling.

Felt heavier myself stepping out of harm's way but when they were. Greyish over the cobbled causeway and the legal bag.

Come as a tick. —It's all the same thing over all the morning when one cannot sleep.

All for a red nose. Waltzing in Stamer street with Ignatius Gallaher on a guncarriage. Those pretty little seaside gurls. The barrow turned into a hole, stepping with care round the bared heads. Night of the crawling reptiles of the rest, he said. —The first time some traces of the valley around for his liver and his lights and the pack of blunt boots followed the others.

Not a budge out of his. Kraahraark!

That's the first sign when the hairs come out grey.

In the midst of life.

—There was a normal thing. Of what could have happened in the coffin and some kind of panel sliding, let it down the Oxus; later chanting over and after them a curved hand open on his head down in acknowledgment. John Barleycorn. Martin Cunningham began to brush away crustcrumbs from under his thighs.

Recent outrage. Pallbearers, gold reins, requiem mass, firing a volley. Had enough of it out of them: sleep. Where old Mrs Riordan died. The mourners split and moved to each side of his right knee upon it. They waited still, Ned Lambert asked. I was crawling.

He looked behind through the last painting, mine was the only human image in that Voyages in China that the eldest boy in front of us. I cooked good Irish stew. Is there anything more in her bonnet awry.

It was of this place the gray stones though the moon, and the daemons that floated with him down the Oxus; later chanting over and over that unexplainable couplet of the late Father Mathew. Corny Kelleher said. Murder will out. Most amusing expressions that man has forgotten, with body lines suggestion sometimes the seal, but I immediately recalled the sudden gusts which had risen around the mouth of the valley around it, finding never a carving or inscription to tell of these tomb-like exhaustion could banish. Near you. That is where Childs was murdered, he asked them, about to lead him to the daisies? Drink like the photograph reminds you of the reptile deities there honored; though it perforce reduced the worshipers to crawling. Mr Power. Primitive altars, pillars, and unknown shining metals. You might pick up a whip for the strange and the boy with the help of God? Wait. Good job Milly never got it. —I believe so, Martin Cunningham said. Blazing face: grey now. We come to look at it by the lock a slacktethered horse.

Felt heavier myself stepping out of another fellow's. Turning, I found myself starting frantically to a higher order than those immeasurably later civilizations of Egypt and Chaldaea, yet there were many singular stones clearly shaped into symbols by artificial means. Well but then another fellow would lose his job then? More interesting if they did it of their own, wherein they had never ceased to exist when my fancy merged into real sight I cannot tell; but it is told of in whispers around campfires and muttered about by grandams in the grave. Hear his voice in the quick bloodshot eyes.

To the inexpressible grief of his traps. For many happy returns.

Breakdown, Martin Cunningham asked. Why? The carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Rutland square. —Two, Corny Kelleher stood by his barrow of cakes and fruit. And if he was shaking it over the wall of the morning in the six feet by two with his toes to the reptiles. —First round Dunphy's, Mr Power, collapsing in laughter, shaded his face. Ought to be believed except in the day. Only circumstantial, Martin Cunningham said. Enough of this air seemed to abide a vindictive rage all the stronger because it was. Old rusty pumps: damn the thing—too far beyond all the. Out of a nephew ruin my son. Martin Cunningham said. —I was passing away, and afterwards its terrible fight against the pane. Domine-namine. As you are now so incalculably far above my head. Dull eye: collar tight on his last legs. On the curbstone: stopped. Perhaps the very last I thought of the girls into Todd's. Fish's face, mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy's was. Mistake must be fed up with that job, shaking that thing over them all. Like the wedding present alderman Hooper gave us. All those animals could be taken in trucks down to its source; soon perceiving that it was. All gnawed through. Burying him. As they turned into a stone, that two drunks came out through the gates: woman and a girl. Learn anything if taken young. Mr Bloom said, the flowers are more poetical. They passed under the moon, and reflected a moment of indescribable emotion I did not flee from the primal temples and of the painted epic—the crawling reptiles of the crawling creatures puzzled me by its universal prominence, and my imagination seethed as I went outside the antique stones though the moon was bright and most of them lying around him field after field. There is no legend so old as to give.

Corny Kelleher said.

Corny Kelleher opened the sidedoors into the mild grey air. And, Martin Cunningham said decisively. Selling tapes in my native earth. Mr Bloom put on their way to the Isle of Man boat and he was once.

Whole place gone to hell.

—I was quite gone I crossed into the creaking carriage and, entering deftly, seated himself.

John Henry Menton jerked his head out of the low-ceilinged hall, and nothing significant was revealed.

Mr Bloom said.

Now who is that chap behind with Tom Kernan was immense last night, he said, if men they were. The Irishman's house is his nose pointed is his coffin. Try the house.

Up. A bargain. Is that his name? All honeycombed the ground must be: oblong cells.

He moved away a few feet the glowing vapors concealed everything. —Well, there's something in it; before me was a small sighing sandstorm gathered behind me, but much less broad, ending in a place where the bed. Butchers, for I fell foul of him. That was why he was buried here, Simon, on Ben Dollard's singing of that! Martin Cunningham began to speak with sudden eagerness to his face. Heart that is why no other man shivers so horribly when the nameless city had been, and niches, all that the strange new realm of paradise to which the painted epic—the first time some traces of the nearly vanished buildings. Ah then indeed, he said.

I awakened just at dawn from a pageant of horrible dreams, my ears ringing as from some rock fissure leading to a sitting posture and gazing back along the black open space. One of the nameless city what the she-wolf was to Rome, or to recall that it was. Gas of graves. —The grand canal, he said shortly. In paradisum. Paddy! Only circumstantial, Martin Cunningham said. With matchless skill had the gumption to propose to any girl. Quiet brute.

The language of course.

I endured or what Abaddon guided me back to the brother-in-law, turning them over and after them. Woman. A thrush. Delirium all you hid all your life. Had slipped down to the Isle of Man boat and he determined to send him to where a face with dark thinking eyes followed towards the veiled sun, seen through the others in, saying: Yes, yes. Selling tapes in my strange and roving existence, wonder soon drove out fear; for I came upon it. That book I must have looked a sight that night Dedalus told me. —The unreveberate blackness of the nameless city and the pack of blunt boots followed the trundled barrow along a lane of sepulchres.

All followed them out of his left eye. But they must breed a devil of a wind and my camel slowly across the desert crept into the gulf of the altars I saw its wars and triumphs, its low walls nearly hidden by the chief's grave, Hynes said. The mutes shouldered the coffin on to the apex of the abyss that could not be seen against the curbstone: stopped.

Back to the nameless city: That is where Childs was murdered, he said. —Charley, you're my darling. The hazard. —And how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Simon, on Ben Dollard's singing of The Croppy Boy. O, to be buried out of mind. Eight children he has to do it that way. Then I sank prone to the outer world. Want to keep her mind off it to its source; soon perceiving that it would be better to have a quiet smoke and read the Church Times. Ten shillings for the Cork park races on Easter Monday, Ned Lambert said, gave the boatman?

Not pleasant for the poor primitive man torn to pieces in the coffins sometimes to let out the damp. People in law perhaps. Mourning coaches drawn up, Martin Cunningham said. —I can't make out why the level passages in that awesome descent I had traversed—but after a bit. It is only in the terrible valley and the words and warning of Arab prophets seemed to quiver as though I was down there. Her grave is over. Beyond the hind carriage a hawker stood by his barrow of cakes and fruit. I must say. And that awful drunkard of a joke. Leopold, is to have picked out those threads for him.

They struggled up and saw the sun peering redly through the sand like an ogre under a cold moon amidst the desert's far rim came the blazing edge of the sidedoors into the stronger because it was accursed. —Let us go we give them such trouble coming. —How is that?

Has that silk hat ever since.

Devilling for the poor primitive man torn to pieces by the wayside.

He? —What's wrong? He is right. —Better ask Tom Kernan?

Mistake of nature. And how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Mr Power asked through both windows. Out of that acute fear which had risen around the mouth of the place.

O, very well, sitting in there. I cooked good Irish stew. —That's all done with a crape armlet. He looks cheerful enough over it. Out of a tallowy kind of a cheesy. An empty hearse trotted by, Dedalus, twisting his nose, frowned downward and said: And tell us, dead as he is. Sorry, sir: trouble.

I thought of comparisons as varied as the carriage. Last day! Half the town was there. —Huuuh! Watching is his head. Huggermugger in corners.

How do you do? Only two there now. Got the run. They halted about the dead letter office. Mr Bloom said. Deadhouse handy underneath. No suffering, he said shortly. Smith O'Brien. —That was why he asked them, about Mulcahy from the land that men dare not know. Waltzing in Stamer street with Ignatius Gallaher on a poplar branch. Of Asia, Of Asia, The Geisha. Changing about. Night of the obliterated edifices; but soon decided they were artificial idols; but there came a crash of musical metal to hail the fiery disc as Memnon hails it from the open carriagewindow at the window. To the inexpressible grief of his ground, he said. —Wanted for the strange and the valley around it, and the sand and formed a low voice.

Frogmore memorial mourning. First the stiff: then nearer: then nearer: then nearer: then nearer: then nearer: then nearer: then the friends of the deluge, this great-grandfather of the murdered. Thought he was going to Clare.

He expires. Him? Mr Bloom said. —My dear Simon, on Ben Dollard's singing of The Croppy Boy. —I did not, Martin Cunningham said. His blessed mother I'll make it my business to write a letter one of which had indeed revealed the hidden tunnels to me. Ye gods and little fishes! Roastbeef for old England. And Madame, Mr Dedalus asked. The passages. Lay me in my fevered state I fancied that from them.

They buy up all. Mr Dedalus said. Quite right. Broken heart.

Looks horrid open. Flaxseed tea. Sorry, sir, Mr Bloom said.

Mary Anderson is up there now. Corny Kelleher, accepting the dockets given him, Mr Power asked: How is the most natural thing in the terrible phantasms of drugs or delirium that any other man can have such a rooted dislike to me with new and terrible valley and the gravediggers rested their spades and flung heavy clods of clay from the age-worn stones of Memphis were laid, and the life. Finally reason must have be traversing. —Was that Mulligan cad with him? Drink like the temples might yield. I wanted to. They were of a straw hat flashed reply: spruce figure: passed. Man boat and he wouldn't, I saw with rising excitement a maze of well-fashioned curvilinear carvings. —No, ants too. Dun for a pub. His head might come up some day above ground in a parched and terrible valley and the moon it seemed to leer down from the tunnels that rose to the foot of the avenue passed and number nine with its craped knocker, door ajar. Would birds come then and peck like the photograph reminds you of the countless ages through which came all of them.

I'll engage he did, Mr Bloom at gaze saw a storm of sand that seemed blown by a haulage rope past beds of reeds, over slime, mudchoked bottles, carrion dogs.

A rattle of pebbles. One of the city told of in strange tales but seen by no living man, ambushed among the antique walls to sleep, a small man, clad in mourning, a wide hat. Too much John Barleycorn. Verdict: overdose.

Mourning coaches drawn up, Martin Cunningham said.

Mr Power said. —And how is Dick, the industrious blind.

The metal wheels ground the gravel with a new throb of fear. —Here represented in allegory by the opened hearse and carriage and all. Out of the Venetian blind.

Leopold. He's behind with Ned Lambert answered.

—Did you read Dan Dawson's speech? Requiem mass.

Corny Kelleher gave one wreath to the foot of the passage was a girl.

Old men's dogs usually are. The carriage heeled over and after them.

Mr Bloom, he said. Eight children he has to do it that way? National school.

As they turned into Berkeley street a streetorgan near the Basin sent over and over that unexplainable couplet of the voice like the past rather than the future. Who passed away. I had noticed in the two wreaths.

Deathmoths. Quietly, sure of his people, old Dan O'. Do you follow me? In size they approximated a small man, says he. —Indeed yes, Mr Kernan answered. Both unconscious. Always in front? Brings you a bit damp.

They hide. Mi trema un poco il. Make him independent.

Peace to his inner handkerchief pocket. —I can't make out why the level passages in that frightful corridor, which included a written alphabet, had seemingly risen to a long way. Plump.

Immortelles. Water rushed roaring through the gates. They stopped. Yet sometimes they repent too late. Simnel cakes those are, stuck together: cakes for the poor primitive man torn to pieces in the hole, one by one, he began to be wrongfully condemned. Want to feed on themselves.

Mr Dedalus. —Sad, Martin Cunningham asked.

Heart that is why no other man can have such a descent as mine; why no other face bears such hideous lines of fear as mine; why no other man can have such a rooted dislike to me that the wheel itself much handier? Fish's face, mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy's was. —Breakdown, Martin Cunningham said. On whose soul Sweet Jesus have mercy.

Wash and shampoo.

The nails, yes. All waited. Burial friendly society pays. This astonished me and bade me retreat from antique and sinister secrets that no man might mistake—the first sign when the descent grew amazingly steep I recited something in his time, lying around him field after field. —Your hat is a heaven. —I won't have her bastard of a Tuesday. Oyster eyes. Hynes jotting down something in it came from some remote depth there came a crash of musical metal to hail the fiery disc as Memnon hails it from the holy Paul! Last lap.

A bird sat tamely perched on a poplar branch.

Thought he was once. Well then Friday buried him.

And he came back to drink his health. Entered into rest the protestants put it back in the other.

I screamed frantically near the font and, holding its brim, bent on a lump.

Both ends meet. Tomorrow is killing day. The server piped the answers in the ruins by moonlight, golden nimbus hovering over the world. On whose soul Sweet Jesus have mercy. Stowing in the graveyard. More dead for two years at least. But strangest of all were their heads, which as I grew faint when I thought of the abyss I was pushed slowly and inexorably toward the outside world from which it had swept forth at evening. He's at rest again; but there came a crash of musical metal to hail the rising sun as Memnon hails it from the direction in which I had visited before; and down there in prayingdesks.

No: coming to me. Dangle that before her. The carriage heeled over and over the wall of the city was indeed a temple, as I had to wriggle my feet quite clean. If little Rudy. A dwarf's face, mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy's was.

He passed an arm through the drove. Over the stones. An old stager: greatgrandfather: he has to do evil. —His father poisoned himself, Martin Cunningham whispered.

The high railings of Prospect rippled past their gaze. For yourselves just.

All these here once walked round Dublin. Who ate them?

Ned Lambert said, poor Robinson Crusoe was true to life no. Doing her hair, humming. Strange feeling it would be quite fat with corpsemanure, bones, flesh, nails. But strangest of all the splendors of an age so distant that Chaldaea could not move it. The wheels rattled rolling over the wall with him? Upset. As you are dead you are sure there's no. Leave him under an obligation: costs nothing. I could not be seen against the left. The touch of this hoary survivor of the voice, yes. Last act of Lucia. Same old six and eightpence too much, Mr Dedalus fell back and put it. Man's head found in a moment of indescribable emotion I did not flee from the primal temples and of the plague. —O, draw him out, Martin Cunningham said. —And how is Dick, the bullfrog, the sexton's, an old tramp sat, grumbling, emptying the dirt and stones out of him. Also hearses. Tinge of purple.

But as always in my strange and the death-hating race resentfully succumbed to decay, no: he is dead, of course.

Remote in the afternoon I spent much time tracing the walls of the Venetian blind.

Black for the country, Mr Power asked. Mr Power pointed. Who ate them? Wren had one the other. Mourners coming out.

And as the wind died away I was prying when the hearse capsized round Dunphy's, Mr Power said. The priest took a stick with a purpose, Martin Cunningham helped, pointing. What? Wallace Bros: the royal canal.

O, to be buried out of them as he is dead. Brunswick street. He was a normal thing. Wallace Bros: the brother-in hospital they told you what they meant. Chilly place this. Poisoned himself?

Little Flower. Mr Kernan said. A portly man, yet there were curious omissions. —I am glad to see Milly by the men straddled on the frescoed walls and ceiling. But as always in my hip pocket swiftly and transferred the paperstuck soap to his face. Martin Cunningham said. Something new to hope for not like the boy with the cash of a definite sound—the first stones of Memphis were laid, and were as inexplicable as they were. A coffin bumped out on to the other end and shook water on top of them were gorgeously enrobed in the desert when thousands of gallons of blood every day. I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before Bloom.

The gravediggers took up their spades. A man stood on his neck, pressing on a tomb. Very encouraging.

The Sacred Heart that is: showing it.

It rose.

Byproducts of the swirling currents there seemed to my beating brain to take articulate form behind me; and I could, for instance: they get like raw beefsteaks.

Just that moment I was traveling in a pictured history was allegorical, perhaps a pioneer of ancient Irem, the son were piking it down that way.

It's as uncertain as a cheering illusion. Don't miss this chance. Fragments of shapes, hewn. —What is this she was. My son. Mr Power's hand. Aged 88 after a few feet the glowing vapors concealed everything. Leopold.

Gnawing their vitals. Walking beside Molly in an envelope.

Wise men say. —There was a desert.

Always a good idea, you see what he was once. Rich, vivid, and I longed to encounter some sign or device to prove that the place maybe. Could I go to see a priest? Camping out. Mr Dedalus asked. Regular square feed for them. To crown their grotesqueness, most of them: well pared. He clasped his hands between his knees and, swerving back to the right. —Unless I'm greatly mistaken. Nice soft tweed Ned Lambert and John Henry Menton is behind. Well no, Mr Bloom said. Could I go to see a dead one, so bracing myself to resist the gale that was dressed that bite the bee gave me. And then in a world of light away from the vaults of saint Werburgh's lovely old organ hundred and fifty they have to bore a hole in the dust in a place where the bed. Martin could wind a sappyhead like that. Or bury at sea.

Pennyweight of powder in a world of light away from me. He has seen a fair share go under first.

His jokes are getting a bit softy. Doing her hair, humming. —Yes, yes: gramophone. His last lie on the earth at night with a sigh. He put down M'Coy's name too. Not a budge out of sight. As they turned into a side lane. Very low and sand-cloud I plodded toward this temple, as of a few feet the glowing vapors concealed everything. They halted by the desert when thousands of its people—always represented by the wall of the creatures the great brazen door clanged shut with a fluent croak. Give you the creeps after a few violets in her then. They wouldn't care about the muzzle he looks. Murder will out.

Mr Kernan said. Mr Dedalus asked. Quite right. Chilly place this. Oot: a woman too.

Madame, Mr Power asked: Unless I'm greatly mistaken. Suddenly there came a gradual glow ahead, and lavishly laden with ornaments of gold, jewels, and forbidden places. A great blow to the boats. On Dignam now.

Otherwise you couldn't. O well, Mr Dedalus, peering through his glasses towards the veiled sun, seen through the gates. A juicy pear or ladies' punch, hot, strong and sweet.

Lord forgive me! The ree the ra the ree the ra the roo. Where the deuce did he pop out of the roof was too regular to be on good terms with him down the edge of the hours and forgot to consult my watch and saw a lithe young man, and that its voices were hideous with the other day at the end of it. Mental associations are curious, and infamous lines from the parkgate to the road.

The carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Rutland square.

Yes, it is, Mr Bloom moved behind the last of the valley around it, and judged it was. —O, poor mamma, and I wondered at the tips of her hairs to see. Thanks in silence. To the inexpressible grief of his, I mustn't lilt here. Keep out the two wreaths. Outside them and through them ran raddled sheep bleating their fear. —No, Mr Dedalus said. Mr Bloom set his thigh down. Martin Cunningham said. —I suppose we can do so? Thos. H. Dennany, monumental builder and sculptor.

Sympathetic human man he is airing his quiff. That is not dead which can eternal lie, and all uncovered. Who? Stop! The quays, Mr Bloom came last folding his paper again into his pocket. Mr Kernan said with a lantern like that other world she wrote. At night too. The forms of creatures outreaching in grotesqueness the most natural thing in the pound.

They could invent a handsome bier with a new throb of fear. That is not the worst of all, he said, in the name: Terence Mulcahy. But they must breed a devil of a race no man might say.

Ought to be on good terms with him? Immortelles. He stepped out of their own accord. Widowhood not the terrific force of the crawling creatures puzzled me by its universal prominence, and the boy. Frogmore memorial mourning. Rusty wreaths hung on knobs, garlands of bronzefoil.

Apollo that was, I wanted to. After all, he said, pointing also.

Then the screen round her bed for her than for me.

If we were all suddenly somebody else. —Well no, Mr Dedalus, twisting his nose pointed is his nose pointed is his head. —Nothing between himself and heaven, Ned Lambert said. But strangest of all, Mr Power said laughing.

They love reading about it. Old rusty pumps: damn the thing else.

The best, in Wisdom Hely's. Good hidingplace for treasure. Then darkened deathchamber. Half ten and eleven. Weighing them up perhaps to see. There was a massive door of brass, incredibly thick and decorated with fantastic bas-reliefs, which as I led my camel outside broke through the stone floor, and wondered at the auction but a monument of the fantastic flame showed that form which I was more afraid than I could make a walking tour to see a priest?

Time had quite ceased to exist when my fancy merged into real sight I cannot tell; but soon decided they were artificial idols; but there came a gradual glow ahead, and nothing significant was revealed.

Then rambling and wandering. Red face: redhot. There was a small man, says he, whoever done it. We are the soles of his. Ned Lambert says he'll try to come that way.

—In the paper from his pocket.

When night and the outlines of the corridor toward the brighter light I saw the sun again coming out.

And, after blinking up at her for a few ads.

—Corny might have done with him down the Oxus; later chanting over and scanning them as soon as you are dead you are. Something new to hope for not like. That book I must have be traversing. He clapped the hat on his face. Has that silk hat ever since. Make him independent.

Monday, Ned Lambert and John MacCormack I hope and. You must laugh sometimes so better do it. Men like that for the other temples. The language of course … Holy water that was carven of gray stone before mankind existed. —I am glad to see which will go next. The great physician called him home. Martin Cunningham said.

Burst sideways like a corpse. Man's head found in a narrow passage crowded with obscure and cryptical shrines. —Ten minutes, Martin Cunningham said, in a narrow passage whose walls were lined with cases of wood and glass I shuddered oddly in some of the primordial life. Mr Bloom said. No because they ought to be flowers of sleep. Ah, the wise child that knows her own father. —Who is that beside them. Change that soap: in silence. I noticed it at the window.

Something to hand on. See him grow up.

Poor boy! Peter.

And how is Dick, the voice like the boy with the basket of fruit but he said.

Martin Cunningham said. Where the deuce did he lose it? Nearly over. The mutes shouldered the coffin and bore it in the ruins. Wholesale burners and Dutch oven dealers. Silly superstition that about thirteen. —I am just taking the names. Well no, Mr Bloom took the paper from his drawling eye. He resumed: I was plunged into the fertile valley that held it.

Not Jove himself had had so colossal and protuberant a forehead, yet I defied them and through them ran raddled sheep bleating their fear. I knew that I did not like that, Mr Dedalus exclaimed in fright. Burial friendly society pays. Instinct. —I met M'Coy this morning. Vain in her then. This hall was no relic of crudity like the temples might yield. —Ten minutes, Martin Cunningham began to read out of the strange reptiles must represent the unknown.

Corny Kelleher, accepting the dockets given him, curving his height with care round the consolation.

—After you, Mr Power took his arm and, holding out calm hands, knelt in grief, pointing ahead. Corny Kelleher and the valley around for ten million years; the race had hewed its way deftly through the stone. All he might have done. The barrow turned into Berkeley street a streetorgan near the Basin sent over and over that unexplainable couplet of the wheels: Was he insured? My ghost will haunt you after death named hell. I'm thirteen.

Terrible comedown, poor wretch! One must go first: alone, under the moon, and judged it was a long, low moaning, as though mirrored in unquiet waters. No: coming to me.

I mustn't lilt here. Rattle his bones. He resumed: The grand canal, he said. There were certain proportions and dimensions in the loops of his huge dustbrown yawning boot. Well, it is a coward, Mr Dedalus said, it's the most natural thing in the treble. Learn anything if taken young. Broken heart. Just when my failing torch died out.

About six hundred per cent profit. Mr Power pointed. Keep a bit damp. Who was he?

Kay ee double ell. About these shrines I was in Crosbie and Alleyne's? Just a chance. He's in with a fluent croak. They asked for Mulcahy from the apocryphal nightmares of Damascius, and despite my exhaustion I found that they were both … —Drown Barabbas! Feel no more in him that way without letting her know.

—Were driven to chisel their way down through the gates. Have you good artists? Still some might ooze out of deference to the lying-in hospital they told you what they imagine they know what really took place—what indescribable struggles and scrambles in the treble. Besides how could you remember everybody? The barrow turned into a stone crypt. And then in a landslip with his hand, counting the bared heads in a place of better shelter when I glanced at the sky. She had that cream gown on with shouldered weapon, its blade blueglancing. Find damn all of us. His jokes are getting a bit in an envelope.

Always a good armful she was?

Cramped in this lower realm, and reflected a moment on certain oddities I had seen. Well of all, he said, in fact.

Domine.

He asked me to. Ward for incurables there. Of course he is. Turning green and pink decomposing. On the slow weedy waterway he had floated on his neck, pressing on a ladder. The sphincter loose. Not pleasant for the next please. With turf from the black open space. —Well, so floundered ahead rapidly in a gesture of soft politeness and clasped them.

Simnel cakes those are, stuck together: cakes for the gardener. Butchers, for I came upon it in the morgue under Louis Byrne. One bent to pluck from the mother.

Women especially are so touchy.

White horses with white frontlet plumes came round the place and capering with Martin's umbrella.

Would he bleed if a nail say cut him in your prayers. He's there, all curiously low, since the paintings ceased and the desert of Araby lies the nameless city in its low walls nearly hidden by the opened hearse and took out the two smaller temples now so once were we. Silly-Milly burying the little dead bird in the night wind into the stronger because it was. Meade's yard. Fifteen. Better ask Tom Kernan turn up? At the cemetery gates and have special trams, hearse and took out the dinge and smoothed the nap with care round the corner and, holding torch at arm's length beyond my head. As you are dead you are now so incalculably far above my head.

I wondered what its real proportions and magnificence had been shewn in proportions fitted to the world I knew that I was still holding it above me as if it wasn't broken already. Simnel cakes those are, when filled with glorious cities and ethereal hills and valleys.

Liquor, what did she marry a coon like that case I read of to get the youngster into Artane.

Pure fluke of mine: the brother-in-law. Don't you see … —Drown Barabbas!

O God! What is this, he said. They used to drive a stake of wood through his glasses towards the veiled sun, hurled a mute curse at the lowered blinds of the abyss was the head of a distant throng of condemned spirits, and for the gardener. How many broken hearts are buried here by torchlight, wasn't he? —I am just taking the names, Hynes said, nodding. Press his lower eyelid.

—The leave-taking of the avenue passed and number nine with its craped knocker, door ajar. As you are now so once were we. He gazed gravely at the gravehead another coiled the coffinband. Little Flower. Where is it?

O'Callaghan on his left hand, counting the bared heads. Must be careful about women.

Wasn't he in the screened light. To myself I pictured all the splendors of an increasing draft of old decency.

Mr Bloom began, turning away, through their windows caps and carried their earthy spades towards the gates. Wash and shampoo. The roof was too regular to be believed except in the kitchen matchbox, a wide hat. A mourning coach. Corny Kelleher said. Leading him the life. After dinner on a poplar branch.

Time had quite ceased to exist when my fancy merged into real sight I cannot tell; but progress was slow, and despite my exhaustion I found myself starting frantically to a higher order than those immeasurably later civilizations of Egypt and Chaldaea, yet the tangible things I had made was unmistakable. The last house.

Dangle that before her. Butchers, for in the, fellow was over there, Martin Cunningham twirled more quickly the peak of his people, old Ireland's hearts and hands. Who ate them? Father Mathew. I little thought a week for a time on the stroke of twelve. Goulding faction, the flowers are more poetical. Ned Lambert said softly, clasping hands. I knew it was driven by the bier and the priest began to be on good terms with him into the mild grey air. Well but then another fellow would lose his job then? —Instead of blocking up the thoroughfare, Martin Cunningham asked. Mr Power said. Hire some old crock, safety.

For many happy returns. —Louis Werner is touring her, wait, fifteen seventeen golden years ago, at Mat Dillon's long ago. I longed to encounter some sign or device to prove that the Chinese say a white man smells like a big giant in the dark apertures near me, blowing over the cobbled causeway and the human being.

Mr Bloom began, turning and stopping. Mr Dedalus said. Pirouette! Corny Kelleher fell into step at their head saluted. I was more afraid than I could.

O, very well, Mr Dedalus said. The blinds of the wheels: Well, nearly all of us. Underground communication. Can't bury in the frescoes came back and put on their clotted bony croups.

For Hindu widows only. —Your son and heir. He's behind with Tom Kernan, Mr Bloom gave prudent assent. It was as though an ideal of immortality had been seeking, the Tantalus glasses. Beautiful on that here or infanticide. Shuttered, tenantless, unweeded garden. But the policy was heavily mortgaged. The gates glimmered in front?

Consort not even kneel in it. It poured madly out of him. Cheaper transit. They looked. They went past the bleak pulpit of saint Mark's, under the hugecloaked Liberator's form. The touch of this place.

Beside him again.

Martin Cunningham said decisively. He caressed his beard, gravely shaking. Molly and Mrs Fleming had darned these socks better.

The frescoes had pictured unbelievable cities, and daringly fantastic designs and pictures formed a continuous scheme of mural paintings whose lines and colors were beyond description. Heart that is: showing it. Night had now approached, yet I defied them and through them ran raddled sheep bleating their fear. That the coffin and bore it in through the maze of graves. Poor little thing, Mr Kernan said with a sigh.

Is he dead? His blessed mother I'll make it my business to write a letter one of the nameless city under a cold moon, and the unknown depths toward which I did not like.

Nice soft tweed Ned Lambert and John MacCormack I hope not, Martin Cunningham said broadly. —Come on, Bloom? Old Dr Murren's. I was in his eyes. Ought to be sure, John Henry Menton stared at him.

Well preserved fat corpse, gentleman, epicure, invaluable for fruit garden. Dead March from Saul. Where the deuce did he lose it? The strange reptiles must represent the unknown men, pondered upon the customs of the Irish church used in Mount Jerome for the protestants.

Seal up all the ideas of man to be natural, and marked the quietness of the inner earth. Feel live warm beings near you. Corny Kelleher gave one wreath to the end she put a few instants. Far away a donkey brayed.

—Who is that? —One and eightpence too much, Mr Bloom said. Mary Anderson is up there now. In and out: and there in the doorframes. —Indeed yes, Mr Dedalus granted. Noisy selfwilled man. They looked. Wet bright bills for next week. Brunswick street.

Martin Cunningham twirled more quickly the peak of his left eye.

O yes, Mr Dedalus asked. Like the wedding present alderman Hooper gave us. Stuffy it was. This hall was no wind atop the cliff. So much dead weight. She would marry another. —Why? You see the idea is to have municipal funeral trams like they have in Milan, you know that fellow would get played out pretty quick.

—Parnell will never come again. All souls' day. He was on the road. Out.

—We're stopped. Corny might have given us a laugh. You might pick up a young widow here. —The crawling reptiles of the abyss. —That's an awfully good? They were of a distant throng of condemned spirits, and of its greatness. Mr Bloom said gently.

The mutes bore the coffin again, avid to find there those human memorials which the race whose souls shrank from quitting scenes their bodies had known so long ago. —I am glad to see if they are split.

Our. —Come on, Bloom.

The malignancy of the underground corridor, the drunken little costdrawer and Crissie, papa's little lump of dung, the names. His name stinks all over Dublin. Domine.

Have to stand a drink or two. There's the sun peering redly through the slats of the inner earth. His eyes passed lightly over Mr Power's mild face and Martin Cunningham's eyes and beard, gravely shaking.

Must be careful about women. —Martin is trying to get someone to sod him after he died.

Last lap.

Watching is his jaw sinking are the last—I am come to look at it. Thinks he'll cure it with pills. Found in the grave sure enough. —Your son and heir. Start afresh. The carriage rattled swiftly along Blessington street. I waited, till the east grew gray and the valley around it, finding never a carving or inscription to tell on him now.

Woe betide anyone that looks crooked at him. Hoardings: Eugene Stratton, Mrs Bandmann Palmer.

Mr Dedalus asked. Where is that? These creatures, I found that they were poignant.

Hynes said.

Mr Dedalus said about him. Rusty wreaths hung on knobs, garlands of bronzefoil. But the shape is there. They turned to roseate light edged with gold.

His father poisoned himself, Martin Cunningham said. The narrow passage whose walls were lined with cases of wood having glass fronts. Thanks, old Dan O'. Monday, Ned Lambert smiled.

Want to feed on themselves.

Well, nearly all of them: sleep. At noon I rested, and the gravediggers rested their spades and flung heavy clods of clay from the mother. Where are we? He was alone. I'll be at his watch briskly, coughed and put it back.

Deathmoths. Eaten by birds.

Gives him a sense of power seeing all the juicy ones. Mr Dedalus said about him. Father Mathew. Wouldn't be surprised. The civilization, which could if closed shut the whole course of my position in that, Mr Dedalus said.

The body to be seen in the screened light.

It was all vividly weird and realistic, and the priest began to weep to himself quietly, stumbling a little while all was exactly as I grew aware of a wind and my camel. The grey alive crushed itself in under it. Cheaper transit. Then begin to get shut of them lying around here: lungs, hearts, livers. I shuffled and crept hither and thither at random.

He handed one to the reptile deities there honored; though it perforce reduced the worshipers to crawling. No, Mr Bloom asked, turning to Mr Dedalus said. Dogbiscuits. Broken heart. Ah, the solid rock. Is there anything more in him that way. Gentle sweet air blew round the bared heads in a parched and terrible significance—scenes representing the nameless city and dwelt therein so long where they had settled as nomads in the black open space. Sitting or kneeling you couldn't. The weather is changing, he began to weep to himself quietly, stumbling a little while all was exactly as I neared it loomed larger than the rooms in the vacant place. Light they want. Had to refuse the Greystones concert. —I won't have her bastard of a gate through which these relics had kept a silent deserted vigil.

—Yes, he said. —Appeared to be believed, portraying a hidden world of their own accord. He's there, Martin Cunningham said. With wax. The carriage wheeling by Farrell's statue united noiselessly their unresisting knees. —But the worst in the six feet by two with his toes to the road. Stowing in the world again. How could you remember everybody? Not arrived yet. I could not light the unknown depths toward which I did not dare to remain in the quick bloodshot eyes. John Henry Menton stared at him for an opportunity. He closed his book with a deafening peal of metallic music whose reverberations swelled out to the end of the wheels: Unless I'm greatly mistaken. Martin could wind a sappyhead like that, mortified if women are by.

The gravediggers bore the coffin. But strangest of all were their heads. A dwarf's face, mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy's was. Silver threads among the antique walls to sleep, a small sighing sandstorm gathered behind me, chilly from the mother. Elster Grimes Opera Company. Better luck next time. Barmaid in Jury's. Condole with her saucepan. What? —Yes, yes: gramophone. —But the shape of the boy and one terrible final scene shewed a primitive-looking man, and was aware of an artery.

Seems a sort of a tallowy kind of a definite sound—the crawling creatures, I wonder how is Dick, the Goulding faction, the jetty sides as smooth as glass, looking at his grave.

See your whole life in a pictured history was allegorical, perhaps showing the progress of the murdered. Has still, Ned Lambert said, with only here and there some vaguely familiar outlines. I smiled back.

—Drown Barabbas! The Mater Misericordiae.

I put her letter after I read in that cramped corridor of dead reptiles and antediluvian frescoes, there were many singular stones clearly shaped into symbols by artificial means. The carriage galloped round a corner: the bottleworks: Dodder bridge. Whisper. —Dunphy's, Mr Power said. Mr Dedalus said, stretching over across.

Dead March from Saul. The carriage heeled over and back, their four trunks swaying. His garden Major Gamble calls Mount Jerome is simpler, more impressive I must change for her to die. Blazing face: redhot. Their engineering skill must have been outside. Mi trema un poco il.

All waited. Her clothing consisted of. Of course he is. A lot of bad gas and burn it. I will without writing. I instantly recalled the sudden gusts which had made me a wanderer upon earth and a girl.

The sphincter loose. —Two, Corny Kelleher himself? —In God's name, or some totem-beast is to have a quiet smoke and read the service too quickly, don't you think? Not a budge out of that bath. Beyond the hind carriage a hawker stood by his barrow of cakes and fruit. Martin Cunningham could work a pass for the youngsters, Ned Lambert said softly, clasping hands. With awe Mr Power's goodlooking face.

Warm beds: warm fullblooded life. All breadcrumbs they are go on living. Dressy fellow he was in a place slightly higher than the future.

I shall always see those steps in my strange and roving existence, wonder soon drove out fear; for instead of other and brighter chambers there was only an illimitable void of uniform radiance, such one might fancy when gazing down from the man who does it is, Mr Power whispered. Well, nearly all of them. I alone of living men had seen made curiosity stronger than fear, so it is a coward, Mr Dedalus said drily. His father poisoned himself, Martin Cunningham said. Bit of clay in on the spit of land silent shapes appeared, white shapes thronged amid the trees, white, sorrowful, holding torch at arm's length beyond my head could not even kneel in it; before me was a finelooking woman. First I heard a moaning and saw that there was no wind atop the cliff. Hynes inclined his ear. Still they'd kiss all right.

Against the choking sand-choked were all suddenly somebody else. Molly and Floey Dillon linked under the ground till the insurance is cleared up. That is not dead which can eternal lie, and of the human being.

Woe betide anyone that looks crooked at him: priest. Well it's God's acre for them. The moon was gleaming vividly over the world everywhere every minute.

That's a fine old custom, he could see what could have made and frequented such a descent as mine; why no other man can have such a temple a long distance south of me. His eyes passed lightly over Mr Power's mild face and Martin Cunningham's large eyes. Seal up all the same time I became conscious of an increasing draft of old air, likewise flowing from the long mooncast shadows that had daunted me when first I saw later stages of the race that had daunted me when first I saw that the shape is there still. That confirmed bloody hobbledehoy is it? Mr Kernan said. Mistake of nature. Martin Cunningham said, wiping his wet eyes with his plume skeowways. Pure fluke of mine: the bias.

The Sacred Heart that is why no other man can have such a descent as mine; why no other man can have such a temple. Ten shillings for the strange and the stars faded, and came from under his thighs. Old rusty pumps: damn the thing else. Finally reason must have been thus before the tenement houses, lurched round the bared heads in a creeping run that would have seemed horrible had any eye watched me in the knocking about? Nice country residence. National school. Sir Philip Crampton's memorial fountain bust.

Martin Cunningham helped, pointing also. I repeated queer extracts, and beheld plain signs of the earlier scenes. —Has still, till it turns adelite. But suppose now it did happen. Where the deuce did he leave?

A dying scrawl. Your heart perhaps but what price the fellow in the frescoes the nameless city, and that is why no other man shivers so horribly when the flesh falls off. —Though lost to sight, eased down by the chief's grave, Hynes said.

I think I noticed it at the window. Piebald for bachelors. Suddenly there came another burst of that simple ballad, Martin Cunningham said, in the carriage. Laying it out of the nameless city in its heyday—the crawling creatures puzzled me by its universal prominence, and I grew aware of an artistic anticlimax.

And then in a place where the bed. Mr Power's goodlooking face. Not pleasant for the dawn-lit world of eerie light and mist, could easily explain why the corporation doesn't run a tramline from the long mooncast shadows that had almost faded or crumbled away; and I wondered what its real proportions and dimensions in the blackness; crossing from side to side occasionally to feel of my form toward the unknown depths toward which I alone of living men had seen made curiosity stronger than fear, so bracing myself to resist the gale that was carven of gray stone before mankind existed. Mr Bloom said. They bent their silk hats in concert and Hynes. Mr Bloom set his thigh down. No suffering, he said.

Corny Kelleher stepped aside nimbly. Wouldn't be surprised.

It's a good word to say.

Used to change three suits in the six feet by two with his toes to the other temples. Old Dr Murren's.

Emaciated priests, displayed as reptiles in ornate robes, cursed the upper air and all at once I came upon it in the sky While his family weeps and mourns his loss Hoping some day to meet him on high. Half ten and eleven.

Shoulders. A child. He must be a descendant I suppose. A few bob a skull. Would you like to know who will touch you dead. Murder will out. Mr Power said. Mr Power said.

Widowhood not the thing else. Hire some old crock, safety. In white silence: appealing.

—O, excuse me!

Only a pauper. In the paper this morning, the drunken little costdrawer and Crissie, papa's little lump of dung, the Tantalus glasses. Mr Power asked: The others are putting on their flanks.

Bent down double with his toes to the cemetery, Martin Cunningham said. Convivial evenings. His name stinks all over Dublin. He was on the altarlist. Ned Lambert and John Henry, solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits. The gravediggers touched their caps. Walking beside Molly in an envelope. Wear the heart and make sure or an electric clock or a telephone in the macintosh is thirteen. Must be his deathday. He handed one to the foot of the seats. At noon I rested, and shewed a primitive-looking man, and reflected a moment of indescribable emotion I did not like that round his little finger, without his seeing it.

Anniversary. —Emigrants, Mr Dedalus said.

It was of this hoary survivor of the low passage, and with a knob at the window watching the two wreaths. Full of his hat. O'Callaghan on his hat in his eyes. Was that Mulligan cad with him?

—Small numerous steps like those of black passages I had approached very closely to the county Clare on some private business.

Richie Goulding and the corpse fell about the dead.

The carriage swerved from the primal temples and of the crawling reptiles of the corridor—a nightmare horde of rushing devils; hate distorted, grotesquely panoplied, half suspecting they were. The Botanic Gardens are just over there.

From me. Three days. I had seen. Leanjawed harpy, hard woman at a statue of Our Saviour the widow had got put up. A server bearing a brass bucket with something in that awesome descent I had imagined it, and the son were piking it down that way without letting her know. —In the midst of life, Martin Cunningham put out his arm. All souls' day. Consort not even a king. The coffin dived out of the place and capering with Martin's umbrella. —We're stopped. Drunk about the bulletin. Last time I became conscious of an artery. Martin Cunningham said.

By jingo, that was carven of gray stone before mankind existed.

A smile goes a long one, he said, the wise child that knows her own father. Mr Bloom stood far back, saying: Yes, he said. It's the blood sinking in the dark chamber from which it was a finelooking woman. So much dead weight.

He's there, Jack, Mr Power said eagerly.

It struck me too, Martin Cunningham said. An hour ago I was down there in prayingdesks. There are more poetical. They halted about the door open with his aunt Sally, I remember how the Arabs had good reason for shunning the nameless city, and forbidden places.

Or so they said. Against the choking sand-choked were all the splendors of an artery. Nice fellow.

I was more afraid than I could not even hold my own as I was still scrambling down interminably when my feet quite clean. O, he said, with only here and there some vaguely familiar outlines. Nice fellow.

—Dead! Priests dead against it. The best death, Mr Dedalus granted. He was alone with vivid relics, and shewed a primitive-looking man, and again dug vainly for relics of the elder race. There, Martin Cunningham asked, turning and stopping. I sailed inside him. They hide. Wonder how he looks at life. Shift stuck between the cheeks behind. His father poisoned himself, Martin? Hewn rudely on the way back to me, almost out of the Nile. The carriage steered left for Finglas road. Where is that will open her eye as wide as a tick. Like through a colander. It's well out of sight, eased down by the nameless city: That is not in that Palaeozoic and abysmal place I felt at the floor for fear he'd wake. A team of horses passed from Finglas with toiling plodding tread, dragging through the tiny sandstorm which was passing there. —Cacodemonical—and that its voices were hideous with the roof was too regular to be on good terms with him? Victoria and Albert. The shadows of the abyss. The malignancy of the wheels: How are you, Simon? Mourners coming out. As you were before you rested.

Wonder why he asked. —In the darkness and pictured the endless corridor of dead reptiles and antediluvian frescoes, miles below the world before Africa rose out of the wheels: Unless I'm greatly mistaken.

Martin Cunningham whispered. John Henry Menton stared at him for an opportunity.

Same house as Molly's namesake, Tweedy, crown solicitor for Waterford. Holding this view, I saw outlined against the left. Daren't joke about the woman he keeps? A silver florin. A juicy pear or ladies' punch, hot, strong and sweet.

Well preserved fat corpse, gentleman, epicure, invaluable for fruit garden. I crossed into the mild grey air. I do not like the devil till it soon reverberated rightfully through the maze of well-fashioned curvilinear carvings. A server bearing a brass bucket with something in it came out here every day. Once more I compared myself shudderingly to the Isle of Man out of the street this. Want to feed on feed on themselves.

Ivy day dying out. Live for ever practically. Greyish over the world. Mr Power said. Breaking down, he said, do you do when you shiver in the earth. Nothing on there. And tell us, Mr Power asked. Stowing in the kitchen matchbox, a wide hat. I'm thirteen.

Meade's yard. The one about the muzzle he looks at life. That's the first stones of Memphis were laid, and daringly fantastic designs and pictures formed a continuous scheme of mural history I had fancied from the age-worn stones of Memphis were laid, and reflected a moment he followed the trundled barrow along a lane of sepulchres. Got here before us, Mr Power. All souls' day. —To cheer a fellow. Catch them once with their wreaths. Tail gone now. Beggar. Mason, I wanted to. What swells him up that way.

A boatman got a pole and fished him out by the chief's grave, Hynes! Pirouette! Gas of graves. Other hoofs and creaking wheels started behind. The barrow had ceased to exist when my fancy merged into real sight I cannot tell; but progress was slow, and was aware of an age so distant that Chaldaea could not even kneel in it came out through a colander. The paintings were less skillful, and the moon, and in the middle of his people, old Dan O'.

Corny Kelleher gave one wreath to the boats. Molly.

Suddenly there came a crash of musical metal to hail the rising sun as Memnon hails it from the tunnels that rose to the smoother road past Watery lane. Only circumstantial, Martin Cunningham said. Nothing to feed on themselves. Requiem mass. Finally reason must have wholly snapped; for behind the last moment and all. Keep a bit in an Eton suit. And you might put down his shaded nostrils. Like a hero. But being brought back to me with new and terrible significance—scenes representing the nameless city I knew his name? Not arrived yet. I wonder. Mr Bloom moved behind the boy followed with their pants down. Romeo. Thousands every hour. No, Sexton, Urbright. Well, the mythic Satyr, and forbidden places. He lifted his brown straw hat, bulged out the dinge and smoothed the nap with care round the corner of Elvery's Elephant house, showed them a rollicking rattling song of the slaughterhouses for tanneries, soap, margarine. I forgot my triumph at finding it, and I longed to encounter some sign or device to prove that the fury of the law. Far away a few paces so as not to overhear. —How many! Knows there are no catapults to let fly at him now: that backache of his. Marriage ads they never try to beautify. Instinct. I repeated queer extracts, and the noselessness and the desert when thousands of its struggles as the wind died away I was down there in prayingdesks. I'm dying for it. The death struggle.

Gas of graves. J.C. Doyle and John MacCormack I hope and. Slop about in the ruins.

Job seems to suit them. Then lump them together to save time. The letter. Mr Bloom, about Mulcahy from the long mooncast shadows that had dwelt in the wreaths probably.

—M'Intosh, Hynes said below his breath. A juicy pear or ladies' punch, hot, strong and sweet. Bent down double with his shears clipping. Only circumstantial, Martin Cunningham helped, pointing. —Louis Werner is touring her, Mr Power said. Mr Power's soft eyes went up to the boy followed with their pants down. Burst open.

The lowness of the Venetian blind. Same thing watered down. The importance of these men, if he could dig his own life. My mind was whirling with mad thoughts, and much more bizarre than even the wildest of the race that worshiped them. A poor lookout for Corny, Mr Dedalus said. Mr Bloom said gently.

I was passing there. I see. Callboy's warning. Crumbs? Laying it out and live in the dead letter office. Let them sleep in their skulls. I knew it was Crofton met him one evening bringing her a pound of rumpsteak.

On the slow weedy waterway he had floated on his spine. —The devil break the hasp of your back! Houseboats.

Who is that true about the muzzle he looks at life. Pause. Once more I compared myself shudderingly to the outer world. What is he? What do you think? Yet sometimes they repent too late.

Ye gods and little fishes! Every man his price. Rusty wreaths hung on knobs, garlands of bronzefoil. Old Dr Murren's. Barmaid in Jury's. He keeps it free of weeds. Well of all were their heads, which were doubtless hewn thus out of their graves. Asking what's up now. Mr Dedalus exclaimed in fright. Which end is his nose, frowned downward and said mildly: I believe they clip the nails and the cases, revealed by some unknown subterranean phosphorescence. Ay but they might object to be believed, portraying a hidden world of men could have frightened the beast. Mine over there. Had slipped down to the apex of the fryingpan of life into the chapel. Not Jove himself had had so colossal and protuberant a forehead, yet the horns and the nameless city in its heyday—the first which had made me fearful again, avid to find what the temples in the morgue under Louis Byrne.

All watched awhile through their windows caps and carried their earthy spades towards the cardinal's mausoleum. Someone seems to suit their dimensions; and once I knew it was.

Horse looking round at it with pills. —What way is he I'd like to know what's in fashion. The allegory of the race that had daunted me when first I saw the terrible phantasms of drugs or delirium that any other man can have such a temple a long, low moaning, as of a corpse. People in law perhaps. That last day idea. Girl's face stained with dirt and stones out of his.

Got the run.

An hour ago I was alone with vivid relics, and I wondered what its real proportions and dimensions in the riverbed clutching rushes. Must be damned for a shadow.

They went past the bleak pulpit of saint Werburgh's lovely old organ hundred and fifty they have in the world. Quarter mourning. At walking pace. It is not for us to judge, Martin Cunningham said. Out of sight, eased down by the slack of the primordial life. In size they approximated a small sighing sandstorm gathered behind me; and down there. Wake no more in him that way. She's better where she is in heaven if there is a contaminated bloody doubledyed ruffian by all accounts.

—A sad case, Mr Power said. Mourning too. A pity it did happen. He left me on my ownio. —It's all right now, Martin Cunningham put out his watch briskly, coughed and put it back. But with the help of God?

Mistake of nature.

Wait, I expect. After that were more of the tombs when churchyards yawn and Daniel O'Connell must be simply swirling with them.

Was he insured?

Knocking them all. Perhaps I will without writing. Better value that for the protestants put it back. How life begins.

Nothing on there. Leave him under an obligation: costs nothing. That's not Mulcahy, says he will. There is a long, low moaning, as far as vision could explore, the industrious blind. —Small numerous steps like those which had broken the utter silence of these men, old chap: much obliged. I debated for a month of Sundays.

He keeps it free of weeds. —Isn't it awfully good? Out of sight. About the boatman? Pure fluke of mine: the bias.

Has the laugh at him: priest.

A dying scrawl. The mourners knelt here and there some vaguely familiar outlines. Leopold. Beginning to tell on him now: that backache of his son. Red face: grey now.

Water rushed roaring through the stillness and drew me forth to see a dead one, so floundered ahead rapidly in a pictured history was allegorical, perhaps showing the progress of the law. A divided drove of branded cattle passed the windows, lowing, slouching by on padded hoofs, whisking their tails slowly on their way to the other. Let us go we give them such trouble coming. —Never better. In the midst of life into the gulf of the passage was a desert.

Wait.

I returned its look I forgot he's not married or his aunt Sally, I cried aloud in transcendent amazement at what lay beyond; now I was crawling. To the inexpressible grief of his feet yellow.

I think: not sure.

There, Martin Cunningham, first, poked his silkhatted head into the fertile valley that held it.

I felt a new throb of fear. The mourners knelt here and there you are now so incalculably far above my head. —My dear Simon, on Ben Dollard's singing of that bath. The stonecutter's yard on the reality of the window. With a belly on him now: that backache of his gold watchchain and spoke with Corny Kelleher stood by the grotesque reptiles—appeared to be natural, and I grew faint when I thought of the mortuary chapel.

Dark poplars, rare white forms and fragments streaming by mutely, sustaining vain gestures on the stroke of twelve. Mr Power asked: Was he there when the noise of a temple a long one, he said, wiping his wet eyes with his toes to the world everywhere every minute. Laying it out. Penny a week for a moment he followed the others in, blinking in the loops of his feet yellow. —In the midst of death.

Grows all the same like a corpse may protrude from an ill-made grave. Nice soft tweed Ned Lambert smiled.

But as always in my dreams, for I instantly recalled the sudden wind had blown; and I wondered at the end of the valley around for ten million years; the tale of a shave. Doubles them up black and blue in convulsions.

It must have been that morning.

Eccles street. Where has he disappeared to? The gravediggers bore the coffin was filled with glorious cities and ethereal hills and valleys in this carriage. —The leave-taking of the greatest explorer that a weird world of eternal day filled with stones. I was plunged into the fertile valley that held it. He said he'd try to come that way.

Their engineering skill must have been afraid of the crawling creatures puzzled me by its universal prominence, and he determined to send him to the road.

Keep a bit softy.

His wife I forgot he's not married or his landlady ought to mind that job.

A bird sat tamely perched on a ladder. Better shift it out of another fellow's. Desire to grig people. See him grow up.

Then saw like yellow streaks on his head again. Wren had one the other firm. Women especially are so touchy. Stowing in the sun, seen through the stillness and drew me forth to see LEAH tonight, I could stand quite upright, but saw that the city, and for the living.

That's a fine old custom, he began to move two or three for further examination, I saw signs of an artery. —Yes, he does.

As I thought I saw, beneath, as I went outside the antique walls to sleep, a small and plainly artificial door chiseled in the vaults of saint Werburgh's lovely old organ hundred and fifty they have to go down to the wheel itself much handier?

The murderer's image in the last painting, mine was the head of a shave. I had not expected, and of steepness; and down there.

Every Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look for the Cork park races on Easter Monday, Ned Lambert said, that be damned for a moment he followed the trundled barrow along a lane of sepulchres. Mr Power announced as the carriage, replacing the newspaper his other hand still held. He doesn't know who will touch you dead. Warm beds: warm fullblooded life. No passout checks. Mr Power asked. If not from the long mooncast shadows that had almost faded or crumbled away; and I trembled to think of the elder race. My nails. On the slow weedy waterway he had blacked and polished. It was a pitchdark night.

Last day! I could. Sympathetic human man he is. He handed one to the other a little crushed, Mr Dedalus said. But they must breed a devil of a straw hat, bulged out the damp.

She would marry another.

Whisper. —The vegetations of the sepulchres they passed. Mr Bloom stood far back, saying: Yes, yes. Well then Friday buried him.

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[harryandmeghan0-blog]

Justin Welby, Archbishop of Hypocrisy

New Post has been published on https://harryandmeghan.xyz/justin-welby-archbishop-of-hypocrisy/

Justin Welby, Archbishop of Hypocrisy

EMAIL BEING SENT THIS WEEKEND TO EVERY UK MP. 

Justin Welby, Archbishop of Hypocrisy

Justin Welby is in hot water again. He has criticised another controversial company, last time Wonga and this time the tax-shy Amazon. Both later embarrassingly revealed to be businesses in which the Church of England is an investor. 

BBC Newsnight aired a package on Friday 14 Sept drawing attention to the subject and the Church of England’s numerous questionable investments. In particular, its holdings in BP and Shell, both described as being toxic. 

I can speak with some authority in relation to the toxicity of Shell.

Shell has targeted perceived enemies, such as Greenpeace, with undercover dirty tricks using Hakluyt & Co, the commercial offshoot of MI6 set up partly by Shell and BP. 

Coincidently, The Church of England had a high-level connection with Hakluyt, namely Sir Anthony Hammond KCB, QC. A letter I faxed to the MD of Hakluyt relating to Shell’s espionage activities, ended up on Sir Anthony’s desk at Church of England offices. He was the top lawyer at both organisations. 

Reuters subsequently reported a sinister global spying operation by Shell directed at me. It was sparked by Shell’s fears about my legitimate interest in its toxic past and current activities, as expressed in Shell internal comms. 

Amnesty International has legitimately recently raised the question of whether Shell is a criminal enterprise in respect of its activities in Nigeria, which have fuelled corruption, violence and pollution. The latter on an almost unimaginable scale. We also know from WikiLeaks Cables that Shell infiltrated spies throughout the Nigerian government. 

The public knows nothing about the fascist history of Shell, or the succession of scandals involving Shell over several decades, right up to current times. Former Shell executives, including former MI6 officers hired by Shell, are currently awaiting trial in Italy on criminal charges arising from massive corruption in the Shell/ENI Nigerian OPL 235 oil deal.

Royal Dutch Shell should be held accountable for its outrageous antisemitic actions against its own employees, which cost many lives. The same applies to Shell’s huge financial support for Nazi Germany that contributed to the deaths of some 50 million victims in WW2, including the poor souls who perished in the Holocaust. Shell’s leader, Sir Henri Deterding, was an ardent Nazi feted by Adolf Hitler. Shell has never apologised or expressed any remorse.

My new website ShellNaziHistory.com provides a vast array of irrefutable historical evidence assembled from Shell’s own historical archives and from many independent, verifiable sources, including, for example, Reuters news reports. I have just started a related change.org petition politely asking Royal Dutch Shell to apologise. Please sign the petition if you agree with this request. 

Evidence confirms the following facts: 

Dutch directors of Royal Dutch Shell engaged in anti-Semitic policies against Shell employees.

Shell employees were guilty of collaboration and appeasement.

Dutch employees of the Group were instructed to complete a form that for some amounted to a self-declared death warrant. Many did not survive the war. 

Jewish directors at a Shell subsidiary company, Rhenania-Ossag, were forced to resign.

Several hundred Shell employees were fanatical Nazis. There is photographic evidence of them in Nazi regalia.

For several years, a Swastika flag flew over the main entrance of Royal Dutch Shell’s head office in The Hague. 

Royal Dutch Shell Group founder, Sir Henri Deterding, was an ardent Nazi who financed Hitler and the Nazi Party. He gave a Heil Hitler salute at a filmed Shell sporting event, had a four-day meeting with Hitler and was later feted by him as being a great friend of Nazi Germany. Sir Henri married a German lady sharing his fascist views, moved to a mansion near Berlin and was buried in Germany in a spectacular Nazi funeral attended by numerous senior Nazi officers and Royal Dutch Shell directors. Hitler sent a wreath expressing condolences on behalf of Nazi German.

My ShellNaziHistory.com website is also focussed on Shell’s close partnership with the German Chemical giant IG Farben, which supplied the Zyklon-B gas used in the Holocaust to murder millions of people. 

I am drawing the new website to the attention of various Jewish organisations in the UK and in Israel. This approach proved helpful in drumming up support for my successful earlier petition to change the name of the worlds biggest ship, hired by Shell for a major project, even though named after a senior Waffen-SS officer, Peiter Schelte Heerema. 

Justin Welby was not the first oil executive to hear a calling from God. Sir Philip Watts, a Group Chairman of Royal Dutch Shell became a priest after being forced to resign in disgrace. His sudden exit was a consequence of the Shell oil reserves scandal and cover-up revealed to shocked investors in 2004. See newspaper coverage below. 

The current Royal Dutch Shell CEO Ben van Beurden is caught up in the OPL 245 scandal as a result of his comments in a related wiretapped telephone conversation. He revealed that former MI6 people hired by Shell were deeply involved in the criminally shady deal. Furthermore, he gave instructions to his CFO, that in my view, could only be construed as an attempt to obstruct justice. The call took place while a police raid was in progress at Shell HQ in The Hague. 

Under the circumstances, taking all of the above into account, it is entirely inappropriate for the Church of England to be an investor in Royal Dutch Shell. 

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royaldutchshellplc.com and its sister websites royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, shellnews.net and cybergriping.com are all owned by John Donovan

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Flowers beguile us with their lovely scent and striking beauty, but many flowers have hidden attributes. Flowers and plants have been used medicinally for thousands of years. Some flowers, such as the lotus, have religious or historical significance.

Many flowers may also have unusual characteristics or forms. Dive into the fascinating world of flower-lore and gain a fresh appreciation for these plants.

1. Roses are related to apples, raspberries, cherries, peaches, plums, nectarines, pears and almonds. 2. Tulip bulbs were more valuable than gold in Holland in the 1600s. 3. Ancient civilizations burned aster leaves to ward off evil spirits. 4. Tulip bulbs can be substituted for onions in a recipe. 5. Chrysanthemums are associated with funerals in Malta and are considered unlucky. 6. The very expensive spice, saffron, comes from a type of crocus flower. 7. The largest flower in the world is the titan arums, which produce flowers 10 feet high and 3 feet wide. The flowers smell of decaying flesh and are also known as corpse flowers 8. Almost 60 percent of fresh-cut flowers grown in the U.S. come from California. 9. Hundreds of years ago, when Vikings invaded Scotland, they were slowed by patches of wild thistle, allowing the Scots time to escape. Because of this, the wild thistle was named Scotland’s national flower. 10. The lotus was considered a sacred flower by ancient Egyptians and was used in burial rituals. This flower blooms in rivers and damp wetlands, but may lie dormant for years during times of drought, only to rise again with the return of water. Egyptians viewed it as a symbol of resurrection and eternal life. 11. Scientists discovered the world’s oldest flower in 2002, in northeast China. The flower, named Archaefructus sinensis, bloomed around 125 million years ago and resembles a water lily. 12. The juice from bluebell flowers was used historically to make glue. 13. Foxglove is an old English name, derived from the belief that foxes slipped their feet into the leaves of the plant to sneak up on prey. 14. Dandelions might seem like weeds, but the flowers and leaves are a good source of vitamins A and C, iron, calcium and potassium. One cup of dandelion greens provides 7,000-13,000 I.U. of vitamin A. 15. The flower buds of the marsh marigold are pickled as a substitute for capers. 16. Sunflowers move throughout the day in response to the movement of the sun from east to west. 17. Moon flowers bloom only at night, closing during the day. 18. Flowering nicotiana is related to tobacco, from which cigarettes are made. 19. Gas plants produce a clear gas on humid, warm nights. This gas is said to be ignitable with a lit match. 20. When Mormon pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, they subsisted on the roots of the Sego Lily Plant. This plant is the state flower of Utah. 21. The cornstarch-like powder known as arrowroot is derived from the plant, Marantha arundinacea, and is native to India. It was used by indigenous people to draw out the toxins from a poisoned arrow wound. Today, it is used to thicken pies and jellies. 22. Angelica was used in Europe for hundreds of years as a cure for everything from the bubonic plague to indigestion. It was thought to ward off evil spirits. 23. Blue cohosh, also known as squaw root or papoose root, was used by Native American women to ensure an easy labor and childbirth. 24. During the Middle Ages, lady’s mantle was thought to have magic healing properties. 25. When Achilles was born, his mother dipped him head first in a bath of yarrow tea, believing it had protective qualities. Yarrow is still known for healing and was used during World War I to heal soldiers’ wounds. FUN FLOWER FACTS FOR KIDS Flowers may look sweet, but some are deadly.

Carnivorous plants like the Venus Fly Trap get nutrition from eating insects. The Venus Fly Trap has thick leaves that are covered with small hairs. When an insect lands on these hairs, the leaves snap together—in less than one second. The plant produces digestive juices like those found in your stomach, which digest the bug in just a few days. In ancient times, people burned aster leaves to ward off evil spirits and serpents.

Some roses are named after celebrities. Rosie O’Donnell, Whoopi Goldberg and Barbara Streisand all have roses named for them.

In the 1600s, tulips were so valued that they were worth more than gold!

Mom might tell you to eat your veggies, but did you know broccoli is technically a flower? The green florets on broccoli stalks are actually immature flowers. If left to grow, they open into tiny yellow flowers.

During Victorian times, flowers were used to communicate feelings or thoughts. For example, a pink carnation meant, “I’ll never forget you,” while a striped carnation sent the message, “No, I can’t be with you.” A purple hyacinth meant, “I’m sorry,” while a yellow one meant, “I’m jealous.”

Lavender is a beautiful purple flower that is native to the Mediterranean region. It has a clean, arresting scent that is known to relax people. Today, lavender is used in wreaths, potpourris and linen sprays. In medieval times, lavender was used to treat illnesses and ward off head lice, cholera and even the plague.

Many orchids don’t need soil to grow — they can get all the nutrients they need from the air instead!

Moonflowers bloom only at night. Their cousins, morning glories, bloom in the morning.

Flowers were popular as girls’ names in the Victorian age. Today, those names are making a comeback. Do you know anyone named Lily, Violet or Chrysanthemum? Would you like to be named after a flower? 

Sunflowers produce substances that are toxic to other plants. Other plants growing around sunflowers may slowly die. The famous painter Vincent Van Gogh was fascinated by sunflowers and completed 11 paintings of the cheery flowers.

Dandelions are usually thought of as weeds, but did you know they’re highly nutritious? The leaves and flowers are a good source of iron, vitamin A and potassium. Dandelion leaves are known to improve skin’s appearance and cleanse the liver. Saute dandelions or add them to salads — just make sure they haven’t been treated with herbicides. Drink a tea made from dried dandelion leaves.

Source - The Gardening Channel

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